The Uninvited Guests in Around the World in 80 Books

May 22, 2012 Tony rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: setting-europe, novels, speculative-fiction

Sometimes you start reading a book and you realize right away that it doesn't fit into any definable genre or type of novel, and it's exhilarating. Similarly, you can be reading a book that at first fits firmly into one style, and then suddenly shifts into something completely different in way that's quite exciting. On the flip side, sometimes these kind of efforts can feel labored or ridiculous, or, as in the case of this book, simply end up feeling kind of a muddle. I knew nothing about this b Sometimes you start reading a book and you realize right away that it doesn't fit into any definable genre or type of novel, and it's exhilarating. Similarly, you can be reading a book that at first fits firmly into one style, and then suddenly shifts into something completely different in way that's quite exciting. On the flip side, sometimes these kind of efforts can feel labored or ridiculous, or, as in the case of this book, simply end up feeling kind of a muddle. I knew nothing about this book upon picking it up, and in the early stages, found myself in an Edwardian country-house soap opera. There are all the tropes: the fine house falling into disrepair, the hand-wringing over whether the family will be able to keep it, the colorfully named inhabitants (Clovis, Emerald, and Imogen/"Smudge" being the three children), the relations with the servants, the dinner party, the nouveau-riche neighbor, and so forth. So far a fairly conventional setup.

Then word comes of a nearby train crash, and the need for the house to host a number of the crash's survivors -- the titular uninvited guests. And this is when the conventional starts to get subtly bent and warped and the story moves away from the country-house soap opera. There's a large group of lower-class passengers, who are in a kind of stunned, dazed state, and are herded into a drawing room and locked in. But more interestingly, there's also a dynamic gentleman whose charisma enthralls Clovis, and before long, he's got the rest of the household sort the palm of his hand. For the large middle section of the book, as the house is invaded by these lower-class refugees, the central cast we've met (the family and their dinner guests) descend into a kind of madness at the hands of this strange gentleman.

And I suppose that's where the book really lost me -- I could not, for the life of me, figure out why they let themselves be bullied by this odious man. Just as a sense of malice and menace builds with the man, so to, does it with the other passengers. Both their behavior and that of their putative hosts seemed odd and incongruous as the book moved along. It gives nothing away to say that all is not as it seems, but the central conceit took far too long to come to light for me, and thus it wasn't until near the end that things started to make more sense. I suppose my dissatisfaction with the book might lie more at my feet than at the author's, but I had spent so much time bewildered by and fed up with the characters, that by the time the nature of the story was clear, it was too late. And the book's true nature is that of a morality tale, modeled very much on those of Saki.

In the end, I was left wondering if this might be one of those very rare cases where a book is better enjoyed if one has a little more of a hint of the nature of things to come than approaching it blindly. I gather that certain editions of the book have jackets that spell things out a great deal more than mine did, and I can't but wonder what I would have thought of the story had I read it with that foreknowledge. ...more

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Jan 09, 2013 Pam rated it really liked it

AUTHOR: Jones, Sadie
TITLE: The Uninvited Guests
DATE READ: 01/27/2013
RATING: 4/B
GENRE/PUB DATE/PUBLISHER/# OF PGS: Fiction/2012/Harper Collins/259 pgs
SERIES/STAND ALONE: SA
TIME/PLACE: 1912/England
CHARACTERS: Charlotte Swift mother to Emerald, Clovis & Smudge Torrington
FIRST LINES: Since her marriage to Edward Swift, 3 yrs after the sudden death of her 1st husband Horace Torrington, Charlotte had changed her position at the breakfast table in order to accommodate her new husband's needs: specifica ...more

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