Published: 2014
Author: Johanna Lane
Beautifully written but not compelling enough
One of the things that I particularly enjoy during the summer is visiting Stately Homes and Gardens. I love wandering round the houses and taking a glimpse into Britain’s past. I imagine the lives of the aristocratic families who lived in the house for generations, the parties that took place, the clothes the ladies wore and the servants who lived downstairs. In my little world the family/staff relationship is very much like Downton Abbey rather than based on any sort of historical accuracy. The one thing I never consider is the lives of the families who either still live in these grand houses or those who handed ownership of the houses over to charities or government agencies. Their financial tribulations don’t ever seem to enter my mind. Johanna Lane’s looks at exactly this aspect of stately homes in her debut novel Black Lake
John Campbell has lost control of his family’s finances and is forced to turn his Irish ancestral home into a museum, moving his wife Marianne and children Philip and Kate into a small cottage on the estate. The first five pages tell us exactly what tragic fate has befallen the family and the following chapters fill out the details, swapping character perspective and timeframe to create a fully rounded story of the Campbell family and their reactions to the unfolding events.
There are some beautiful moments – eight year-old Philip’s shock at no longer being able to just take a drink from the kitchen fridge and instead is told that he must pay is a lovely touch and conveys a real sense of loss and confusion. The writing is lovely and poetic but despite a few impressive moments it’s not enough to make the whole book a total success.
I found myself not invested enough about any of the characters to care about the impact of losing their home and their place in the world. John and Marianne were a thoroughly mismatched couple and there was no believability in their relationship, making hard to care if they managed to survive their tribulations. In crafting beautiful narrative, Lane forgot to actually make us care about where the narrative was taking the characters.
I’m sure there will be lots of people who disagree with my assessment and who are taken along by the lyricism and the fascinating look at the mechanics of creating a stately home. Unfortunately for me it just wasn’t quite compelling enough.