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Puccini's ghosts

by Joss, Morag.

Format: Print Book 2006
Availability: Available at 1 Library 1 of 1 copy
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Available (1)
Location Collection Call #
Hampton Community Library Fiction F JOSS
Location  Hampton Community Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  F JOSS
 
 

Summary
CWA Silver Dagger Award winner Morag Joss peers into the soul of a wounded family in this haunting, harrowing masterpiece of psychological suspense. With equal parts subtlety and menace, Joss takes us on a dizzying journey toward a collision between fantasy and reality--and an astounding moment of revelation that shatters illusions, hopes, and lives forever. The year is 1960. The place is a Scottish seaside town utterly devoid of culture and charm. Here, Lila lives as the third player in her parents' dramatically embittered marriage. Until her flamboyant, irrepressible uncle George shows up from London and her family decides to squander a windfall on the most preposterous of causes: a civic production of the Puccini opera Turandot. Lila knows nothing of opera and little of her uncle or the dashing young man he hires to sing the role of Calaf. But Lila does know passion. Because it's coursing through her veins--and rushing blindly, wildly all around her. Now a girl on the verge of womanhood is about to blunder into a grown-up world where secrets are kept and exposed, hopes soar and wither, and where crimes petty and great exact the most chilling punishments of all. Masterfully paced and spellbinding till its final, haunting scene,Puccini's Ghostsis a piercing look into the fierce darkness that lurks behind seemingly ordinary lives. From the Hardcover edition.
Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "The death of her father brings opera singer Lila du Cann back to her childhood home in a small town in Scotland. Although she has tried to block out recollections of growing up with diffident parents, memories of her fifteenth summer, her Turandot summer, overwhelm her as she goes through the family's possessions. It was the summer of her operatic debut in a village production of Puccini's opera; the breakup of her parents' sad marriage; her first desperate crush on a boy; and her discovery of her energetic, optimistic uncle George having sex with her boyfriend. Relationships between characters unfold slowly, as perceived through the eyes of naive, angry Lila, whose actions precipitate the family's downfall. The story of Puccini's opera frames the novel, reinforcing a sense of the tragedy that Joss lays out for her own characters. The author's richly detailed backdrop and memorable characterizations pull readers into the sad novel, which gradually spins out into a wrenching, sharply delineated climax. Give this to readers who like Minette Walters. --Stephanie Zvirin Copyright 2006 Booklist"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "At the start of British author Joss's somber fifth novel of psychological suspense, opera singer Lila du Cann (nee Eliza Duncan) returns to her childhood home on the Scottish coast to bury her estranged father. As she starts clearing out the family house, a chance visit to the attic awakens memories of the summer she was 15. Flashback to 1960. Lila's charming uncle George, a music teacher, arrives from London and her warring parents agree willy-nilly to finance an amateur staging of Puccini's opera Turandot. Uncle George, the producer, hires an attractive tenor, Joe Foscari, for the male lead of Calaf. Soon Lila is smitten, but does Joe have designs on the adolescent girl or do his affections lie elsewhere? Despite a cast of expertly drawn characters, each unhappy in his or her own way, the plot is slow to develop. Still, Joss, whose Half Broken Things (2005) won the CWA Silver Dagger Award, shows real promise that she may one day join the ranks of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects Teenage girls -- Fiction.
Families -- Fiction.
Sopranos (Singers) -- Fiction.
Opera -- Production and direction -- Fiction.
Scotland -- Fiction.
Psychological fiction.
Publisher New York :Delacorte Press,2006
Edition Delacorte Press hardcover ed.
Language English
Description 367 pages ; 24 cm
ISBN 038533978X
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