What makes a book a success?

Briefly, in fiction, poetry, drama, for a book to be a success the reader has to care about the characters.  Some beautifully written books leave us cold because we don't like or care about the people in them.  I've read, and enjoyed, badly written books, some romances, some sci fi, some mystery, because I cared about the character, even if they were two dimensionally drawn and shallow.  Something made me care.



I like reading when I was young, Jackie and Joan Collins books; I didn't think they were going into the literary canon, but there characters in them I worried over.  Same with Judith Krantz.   Barbara Pym has made a career of birthing memorable characters, and Jane Eyre, Ann Karenina, and Jo March have transcended the pages of their own novel homes.  So has Nora from A Dolls House, so have any number of Shakespeare heroes and heroines.  Comic heroes do the same to us, hence passionate discussions over who is better, Superman or Batman.  Ahab, Ishmael, Lord Jim, Billly Budd, Tess, we lvoe and care for them. Even our animal protagonists get to us, Bambi, Dumbo, Beautiful Joe, Black Beauty, Lassie, Stellaluna, on and on.



Plots are nice, nonfiction passions make those books go round, but in the world of fiction, we have to care, and the character needn't be the most moral, law abiding  creature in the book. Like the real people in our lives, fictional folk have to spark an emotion; we don't care how they've been created via pen and paper, but we care about them and what happens to them. That is what drives the story.

On Loss

" I remembered that after my father died I would wake up in the morning and I would not remember for a minute that we had lost him, and then when I did, it was not so much amguian that I felt as a simple child's desire to be back in the time before he died."

Anne Rivers Siddons, The House Next Door

The House Next Door

Review of The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

There is an old Greek saying that if you don’t praise your own house, it will fall on you.  Indeed, good old Elphaba could tell us a lot about houses that fall and kill one’s siblings.  There are books about them, too, those nasty, vicious, sort of haunted houses, but the ghosts and malicious presence are the house itself.  Rose Red, Amityville Horror, The Haunting of Hill House, and so many more nasty abodes seem to have their own brand of deadly in hospitality.

Siddons has written a masterful suspense about a malicious house and its grounds worthy of real estate like The Castle of Otranto.  This brilliant, modern house, and its lush grounds and rhododendrons, prove deadly to all its owners.  Spoiler alert; the architect does not leave unscathed.  Also, if you like pets and animals, maybe you want not to read this book.

The praise heaped on the house next door soon turns into a curse.  Strange maladies, violence, and personal tragedies creep up on you.  The prologue skillfully foreshadows  events to come.

Colquitt and Walter Kennedy are the couple who witness and define the neighborhood, full of old money, but not ostentatious.   Their names conjure Camelot, which we all know wasn’t. Comfortable, New Englandy, a classier version of Peyton Place.  A talented architect creates a gorgeous modern house in  neighborhood of classic traditional homes.  Each part of the book introduces a new family that meets with all kinds of catastrophes once they move into their dream home. An interesting aside is the name “Colquitt” which is an old Anglo Saxon name meaning “from the coal pits.”

Be careful what y wish for; you might get it.  This house is pure, shining, daytime evil, where no one is safe.