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Summary: Eva Moves Your Heart
Review: Eva Moves the Furniture is a lovely, enchanting and moving story of a girl born as her mother dies. As Eva grows, she begins to be visited by a girl and a woman whom she refers to as her 'companions.' Eva soon realizes that no one else can see her 'companions.' These specters guide Eva, helping her with her chores and several times saving her life. Most stories that involve ghosts also involve horror, but Margot Livesey gives us ghosts who are like us...good, bad, and flawed. As a daughter, as a mother and as a reader, this book touched me, cheered me and moved me as few novels have.
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Summary: Of ghosts and family
Review: This is a novel that lives in your mind like a poem. It's a ghost story, a coming of age novel, a book about love and death. It is difficult to put the book down, once you have begun reading. Right away you like Eva, the narrator, and empathize with her loneliness, and her struggle to live her own life, to make a living. The spirits who have visited her since she was a baby--"the woman" and "the girl"-- are ghostly projections of family. They help and hurt, they're jealous, selfish, selfless all at once just like real mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. Eva's Scotland is a nether world of spirits. They seem to like the granite cities and the hills. At one level the book poses the question: how can human beings live their own lives while doing justice to those who give us life and help us? But EVA MOVES THE FURNITURE is also an absorbing story. You want to know what is going to happen when Eva, working as a nurse in Edinburgh during WW II, falls in love with a surgeon. The author has a keen sense of history. Most of the action of the novel takes place before and during the war, but there is not a false note in the entire book. It is utterly convincing in its historical setting. At the end of the novel, Eva discovers who the ghosts were during their time as living persons. Eva knows herself at this point, too. You finish the book with an "ah Bartleby, ah humanity" kind of feeling.
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Summary: Slow, But a Wonderful Ending
Review: I thought the book was somewhat slow. I also thought there were several loose ends that were never cleared up and that was disappointing. However, you are kept guessing throughout the story as to what the "companions" motives really are and that is why I continued reading it. I'm happy I did because the ending was fabulous. In short, the ending made the book.
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Summary: A beautiful and skillfully crafted work of fiction
Review: I found this book on a remainder table and purchased it on a whim simply because I liked the cover; imagine my surprise, then, when I began reading and found an expertly crafted novel that told a beautiful story. Livesy combines the best elements of fiction: line by line, the prose carries you along smoothly and pleasurably through well-paced chapters which are organized according to a well-developed plot; the characters are vivid and unusual; but more importantly, they are endearing. So much contemporary fiction is ironic to the point of heartlessness, featuring distant characters who are no more than symbols for the author's intentions; but in "Eva...", Livesy returns to the tradition of writing characters whom the reader feels they know and care about. Without being sacharine, sentimental, or cliche, Livesy skillfully renders tenderness, and devotion. The text is brave in its emotional vulnerability, and the risk pays off by involving the reader in the world Livesy creates. As I read the final pages, I was moved to tears.
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Summary: Not Your Average Ghost Story
Review: From the title, one expects another POLTERGEIST novel of horror and gore. Instead, EVA MOVES THE FURNITURE turns out to be for anyone who may have lost a loved one early in life and fondly dreams of them often. The author beautifully descibes the strange events of rather ordinary people amidst an extraordinary setting. She draws her readers into her world so gently that the barriers between reality and the fantastic quickly merge. The companions, as she comes to call them, are not visible to others, however, and their purpose in her life seems unclear. By the end of the novel, Eva has discovered who the companion ghosts were during their time as living persons, but most importantly, who she is. Any mother or father who yearns to protect their child will relate to Eva and react emotionally to Livesey's moving story. The author shares that it took a decade to write the novel. Thankfully she finished it and was able to present a moving novel, which reads somewhat like a biography. By the conclusion, I was saddened to see it end, yet it was a joy to know that Ruth, like Eva, would be well taken care of from both here and the hereafter.
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Summary: Eva Moves the Furniture
Review: It has been many years and books since I have wept as I did over this story. The story moves easily and the reader is caught up in the main character, Eva. A good book to spend an afternoon with.
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Summary: A fast read, a good day for a weep
Review: I read this book on a rainy, lazy Saturday. I wouldn't call it brilliant for a novel; in fact it had a short story feel. The novel itself up until the ending was a breezy read, easy on the brain. The last few pages were what is worth the purchase of this book. I just remember feeling this immense sadness at the end, so I re-read the ending again. It made me weep, a great-sobbing weeping that was ultimately very satisfying. I think the sadness comes from being a mother; however,I won't give away the ending.
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Summary: lovely bones without the horror
Review: What a lovely, hopeful, beautiful book. It is about life after death (as with Lovely Bones) but also about life *around* death, life despite death; life even, perhaps, enhanced by death and the companions who have come back from the other side. The scenes of Scotland, her childhood, her nursing training, the war wounded, and her courtships painted a wonderful picture of a period we can never know. The arcs of the relationships (her aunt, her husband, her dad, her daughter, and most of all her companions) were wonderful to watch -- and the ending..oh, my. It is ironic to me that one of the "categories" that this book falls into is "maternal deprivation." It seemed to me throughout the book that it was in fact about maternal fullfillment, maternal enhancement. It's really a great book, highly recommended, easy and quick to read and sticks to your ribs.
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Summary: Interesting concept, but unsatisfying overall
Review: I was moved to purchase this book because I love the name Eva, I was interested in the spiritual aspect of the story, and I am the mother of a daughter. Eva, the title character, is raised by her father and aunt after her mother dies shortly after her birth. She is also guided and influenced by two spirit visitors. These visitors shape her world; leading her in certain directions and away from people and interests they don't approve of. We aren't sure until the end who these visitors are and whether their intentions are in Eva's best interest. I was quickly pulled into the story and fascinated by the events taking place. I puzzled over the motivations of Eva's visitors. Unfortunately, I was still puzzled as the book ended. Or, rather, I was left wondering "Is that all there is?" I had expected a profound mission for her visitors, and I was disappointed.
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Summary: An absolute gem
Review: written in a wonderfully spare, clean style -- a refreshing change from so much of today's overblown, deliberately inaccessible writing. If you like Alice Hoffman's books, you'll love this one, which deservedly won the Atlantic Monthly's annual best fiction award.
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