I was gifted some truly epic-looking gothics for Christmas. I asked my daughter to pick out the first read for me, and this was the lucky winner. According to the summary on the back, three women are "in love" with John Hardacre (which is a lie, by the way). Prudence is the governess, Violet is the strumpet, and Laura is the wife.
I'm not really sure how to talk about the "plot" of this book. I'm not sure there is one. It's basically two of these three women fighting for possession of John. And I'm not even sure he's worth it. Actually, scratch that. I'm positive he's not. He gets drunk, sleeps with one of them, misses his daughter's recital and treats everyone like crap most of the time.
Prudence is ridiculous. She's all on board with falling in love with John, even though he is basically a putz. She looks over at the man, drunk as a skunk, right after he's missed his daughter's first recital, and thinks about it's a perfect moment. Say what?!
Some of the writing in this was wild. The whole bridge thing was weird. It was a vision or a dream. I can't tell. It was just crammed in there randomly at one point. Hands down, my favorite sentence in the entire book was, "The master's foot is the best dung." I quoted that to multiple people, and no one knew what it meant.
The other weird thing is the time period. When I think "gothic," I'm thinking 1800's. This time, we're post WWII. I think the best thing that could have happened to all these people would have been for a bomb to have dropped on this farm and killed everyone. Just have the daughter be at a dance lesson with Miss Petula. She was the best character, and the daughter had talent. But no one cared.
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