Idgie
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THE HOUSE AT THE END OF HOPE STREET
By Menna Van Praag
What would you do if you had ninety-nine days to change your life? When you enter the world of Menna van Praag’s magical debut,
THE HOUSE AT THE END OF HOPE STREET (Penguin; On-Sale: March 25, 2014;
978-0-143-12494-8; $16.00) about
an enchanted house that offers refuge to women in their time of need,
that is precisely what you’ll begin to ask yourself.
When
Alba Ashby, the youngest Ph.D. student at Cambridge University, suffers
the Worst Event of Her Life, she finds herself at the door of 11 Hope
Street. There, a beautiful older woman named Peggy invites Alba
to stay, on the house’s unusual conditions: she’ll have ninety-nine
nights, and no more, to turn her life around. The enchanted house will
help Alba get her life back but, Peggy warns her, it may not give her
what she wants. It will give her what she needs.
The house, invisible to everyone except those who need it, has had more
than a few distinguished guests. Virginia Woolf, Dorothy Parker, and
Agatha Christie, among others, all stayed there at hopeless times in
their lives and still hang around—quite literally—in
talking portraits on the walls.
At Hope
Street Alba meets Carmen, a sexy singer who no longer performs, and
seems haunted by something that is buried under a plant in the garden
with flowers so dark they are almost black. Living with them is Greer,
a failed actress who’s hiding a dark secret of her own. But perhaps
most mystifying of all is Peggy herself, who entertains her lover on
Sundays, eats chocolate cake for breakfast, and holds conversations with
the illustrious tenants occupying the house’s
walls. As Alba begins to piece her life back together she discovers her
own family has been hiding truths from her, truths that will lead Alba
to places and people she never knew existed and to a life she never
dreamed possible.
Inventive, charming, and filled with a fabulous cast of literary figures,
THE HOUSE AT THE END OF HOPE STREET is a wholly imaginative novel of feminine wisdom and second chances, with just the right dash of magic.
About the Author
Menna van Praag is a freelance writer, journalist, and Oxford graduate. She is the author of
Men, Money and Chocolate. She lives in Cambridge, England, with her husband and son.
THE HOUSE AT THE END OF HOPE STREET
Penguin; $16.00
ISBN:
978-0-143-12494-8; On Sale March 25, 2014