The Children's Hour

Rating:
Summary: The Best Christmas Gift Ever
Review: I have been bemoaning the fact to my family for months that 'The Children's Hour' wasn't arriving in Canada until the summer of 2004. Much to my surprise it was wrapped and under our tree, a gift from my wonderful daughter!
Once I picked it up on Boxing Day, I sat and read it until 2 a.m. I couldn't put it down. Her descriptions take you into another world and you become engrossed in the characters. I like a book that goes back and forth from the present to the past as this one does. Her characters are well-rounded and some so easy to love.
There are several secrets afloat throughout the novel, but, one in particular made me gasp out loud, and was another completely unexpected.
As much as I've loved all your books Marcia, I think this one will be very hard to top! Congratuations on a job well done!

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable...But a Bit Too Sweet & Tidy
Review: The book was lying on my grandmother's bedside table. For some, that alone would be a sign of a sure snoozer. My grandmother, though, reads everything. So, here I am, 9 months pregnant and feeling in bit of a gentle mood, and this book fit the bill. Of course, the publishers have opted not to align Marcia Willett with Penelope Lively and Anita Brookner, but are more interested in appealing to Rosamund Pilcher and Anne Rivers Siddons' readers. Smart marketing move. The novel is decidedly more accessible and less literary than the efforts of Willett's British counterparts and the industry knew just where to place it...on a shelf that will likely draw upon the wider popularity of authors who are no strangers to bestseller lists. While Willett's efforts to tie up every loose end was a bit cloying, I enjoyed certain cozy aspects of the sisters' British country home life.

Rating:
Summary: Cosy and Comforting, Willett Delivers Memorable Family Saga
Review: The characters are unforgettable, the setting one that comforts and delights, the plot realistic with equal parts joy and sadness. Overall, one of the best books I've ever read and one that will stay with me for a long time.

Mina and Nest are two 70-something sisters living in the family home of Ottercombe on the English coast. Nest has been crippled in a horrid automobile accident that took the life of one of her sisters and her brother-in-law. The novel moves back and forth in time from the present to when Mina and Nest were children and enjoyed the children's hour ( a special story-telling time) with their four other siblings and their devoted and much-beloved mother. The reader is privvy to their growing-up years with all the joy and tragedy of young love, lost love, and a world at war.

When the story opens, their eldest sister, Georgie, is coming to stay with them for a few weeks until she can move into an assisted living facility. Because of her dementia, her daughter and son-in-law can no longer care for her. Mina and Nest are apprehensive about caring for Georgie, not only because of their physical limitations but also because of Georgie's taunting personality. Shortly after she moves in she menancingly tells them she knows a secret. Mina and Nest are fearful of not only what she knows but to whom she might confide the secret. Unknowingly, Georgie becomes the catalyst that reveals not one, but many family secrets long buried.

The present part of the story also centers on Lyddie, one of the nieces, who has a career as an editor and is married to a pub owner. Her problems and her husband's secret will lead her to Ottercombe to heal her own wounds.

From the opening chapter to the closing words, this is a novel you will not want to put aside. Why does Nest feel responsible for the accident? What was the legacy of Timothy, the handsome friend of their father's who visited them often? How can infidelity be handled or should it always be run away from? Can a first love ever be truly forgotten? And how will the internet change the life of a reclusive septugenarian? The finale sent cold chills up my spine as I gasped with shock, smiled with pleasure, and shed a few tears for remembered love.

Rating:
Summary: Another Willett Winner
Review: What did we ever do without Marcia Willett?

Here, in her third U.S. entry, she once again pulls the reader in on the first page. This is her special talent: You open the book, you read the first sentence, and you have magically entered the room in which resides the lead character. You can see it, you can smell it, you are THERE. This has happened in her previous two books, and it has happened here. I don't know how she does it.

"The Children's Hour" takes place concurrently in the present and in the past, namely the 30s and 40s, in the same Cornish estate overlooking the sea where our two protagonists, elderly sisters Mina and Nest, were brought up in a large family of laughing children, dogs, books and a loving, wonderful mother.

As the book begins, Mina, in her seventies, is both caretaker and loving companion to her disabled sister Nest, also in her seventies, whose disability has resulted from a decade-old car crash that killed another sister, Henrietta, and her husband Connor. We know that Nest feels tremendous guilt over being the only survivor of the crash, but we don't know quite why. The sisters live quite calmly and cozily together in their childhood home with three dogs and all the comforts--including the Internet--until their serenity is shattered by discomfiting news: Their oldest sister Georgia, in the first distressing stages of alzheimers disease, is being brought to stay by her grown daughter Helena until space can be found for her in a nursing home.

Georgia's terrible disease, which includes a terribly disconcerting desire to spill long-buried family secrets, becomes the catalyst by which we learn those very same secrets as the book slides effortlessly between the present and the past. We meet the five sisters (and one brother) as children, as teens, as young women--and in their middle age, and we learn to love them and to despair of their sometimes foolish and heartbreaking--even heartrending--decisions.

As Georgia's increasing illness creates more and more stress in the formerly calm little household, an entire story of a time and place long gone entertwines with the present day until, like Georgia herself, we are hard put to tell them apart. The end, when it comes, makes perfect sense, and will cause any reader to weep sad but sweet tears.

This book is a keeper, a gem. Read it!

Rating:
Summary: entertaining character study
Review: Worried about her mother suffering from Alzheimer's and unable to provide the round the clock caret, Helena asks her aunts Mina and Nest to watch over their sister Georgie until she can be placed in a nursing home. Mina, who would have to be the prime caretaker since Nest is wheelchair bound, agrees. Thus for the first time in years the three sisters live together in the family home Ottercombe in Devon.

Their time together rings out secrets that none want revealed, but Alzheimer's leads to exposure. Each looks back to a serene time of loving family until adultery and betrayal destroyed the camaraderie, but a subsequent car accident nuked it forever or at least until now. Nest lost the ability to walk and a forth sister Henrietta died on that fatal night when quarrels caused by the love of the same man ended fatally. As revelations and feelings surface with Georgie as the catalyst, the trio begin to let go of the past, bit can each one reach out to hug one another.

This entertaining character study focuses on four sisters whose rivalries turned a caring extended family into dysfunctional enemies. Readers get up close look at the incident that destroyed the well-being of everyone involved. Though no action whatsoever even looking back at the pivotal moment, readers will enjoy this gentle breeze with the message that feuds and grudges are harmful while reconciliation and nurturing provide solace.

Harriet Klausner