Idgie Says:First, if you do go to buy this book, pay attention. Whilst perusing Google for cover art I discovered there are several books with the same title.
Escaping a disappointingly lived life, Cynthia arrives in a small hamlet filled with eccentrics. It has an old fashioned flair to the town and setting, but as she is able to drive into the city for art supplies, I believe it's in a more modern time that you first believe it to be. Cynthia hears about a caretaker's cottage on a large estate for rent and on a whim drives out to investigate. She also holds hope that she might be able to revive her career as an artist. Next thing she knows, without really remembering agreeing to stay, keys are tossed in her hand and she is the renter.
She meets people, falls in love, follows her hope of discovering the mysterious "ghost boy" that shows up on numerous occasions, shies away from a frightening hill that her house grows into and investigates a mysterious missing young man from long ago.
Where at one point Cynthia mentions she feels she is living her life in a dreamlike state, almost a fog of unreality, it captured the essence of the book also. I felt that I was floating above the scenes, catching most of the glimpses I needed to make the story come together in my mind, but also continuing to miss little pieces of it at the same time. The story is somewhat purposefully choppy in places, making you hunt for what's going on. It's a throwback novel from a different time.
Very well done.
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Book Description:
Glimmerglass
Mercer University Press
September 1, 2014
Perhaps it was a sense of estrangement from the
everyday that drew Cynthia Sorrel to the village of Cooper Patent. The
failed painter was lured by the gatehouse with its seven doors, the lake
with its tower, and the magical air of a place that couldn't quite
decide whether it was fictional, mythic, or real. The gatehouse should
have been a first clue that she was on a journey, and soon she begins to
glimpse and then to pursue a figure in the woods near her house,
convinced she has seen the Muse.
As she reclaims her calling as a painter and moves deeper into the
uncanny world of Cooper Patent, Cynthia finds herself at the heart of a
labyrinth of mystery.
She will have to navigate its dream depths and
secrets, brilliant or dark, locked behind a door that opens into the
earth.
Sébastien Doubinsky writes, "I cannot recommend an author more than
Marly Youmans, whose fantastic prose is absolutely gorgeous and
haunting." Now this "best-kept secret among contemporary American
writers" (Books & Culture) has scaled the tree of books and plucked
twigs of gothic romance, ghost tale, medieval dream vision, and belated
coming-of-age story, with a leaf or two from the novel of manners and
fantasy. The transformed result, Glimmerglass, is a gift to literature like no other.