The window is in the top-floor flat of London's Willerton Hotel, where Americans Cookson and Ellen Selway are spending a month--just after their much-loved daughter Jordie leaves for boarding school. Ellen, a mystery-series author, plans to send her female Episcopal-priest sleuth to London in her next book. Cookson, a recovering alcoholic/drug addict, "clean" for many years, made a bundle first selling drugs and then operating a trendy restaurant; he now manages family investments (and accompanies his wife on research trips). But strange things happen at the Willerton: he hears piano music no one else hears, in rooms where no one lives; he sees and interacts with mysterious people--invisible to everyone else--linked to the tragic fall of a young woman from that same window 60 years earlier. The ex-addict is addicted again, exploring a puzzle that estranges him from others as it endangers them. As in The Music Room (1990) and School for the Blind (1994) and his prizewinning short fiction, McFarland's three-dimensional characters weave an involving spell. Mary Carroll
From Kirkus Reviews
McFarland's old strengths (The Music Room, 1990; School for the Blind, 1994) are less evident this time: His often golden style survives, but psychology and focus are bungled in this tale of a man paying for the sins of his past through encounters with ghosts in the present. Cookson Selway travels for a month in London with his wife Ellen, a writer of mystery novels who wants to do location research. The couple book into the quaint Hotel Willerton, where all seems fine until Cook begins acting strangely, cursing in his sleep, waking up exhausted and reeking of whiskey--all signs of relapse into the depraved life of drugs and booze he'd lived earlier while making his millions as a drugged and dishonest restaurateur in Manhattan and before the purifying miracle of his daughter Jordie's birth (Jordie, now a teenager, is in boarding school back in Cambridge). As much as Ellen pleads, and as much as Cook swears he'll pull himself together, ``The Strange Business at the Hotel Willerton'' forms a spiral downward--though a painfully slow one as hint after pseudo-Jamesian hint crawls by (``This wordy explanation will have to do. It's the only one I have'') before the ``ghosts'' in the old hotel finally manifest themselves openly by sucking energy from the living Cook. By that time, the ghosts' tales of family murder and long-ago vileness will seem related only distantly to the sins of Cook's own reams-ago and dimly remembered life (his redneck father, one cause of early Cookian guilt, murdered a black man and got off easy), and what takes over instead of deepening character are the mechanics of how ghosts function and what they do. `` `I'm very tired,' '' one of them says, `` `This takes a toll, you know, all this emerging. It's a great pleasure in its own way, but it does take a toll.' '' Many will concur at the finish of this tiresome book that aimed high, but got paled out, then hit low. (Literary Guild selection; $50,000 ad/promo; author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“An irresistible tale that ventures into the ghostly realms of psychology, personality and intimacy.” —San Francisco Chronicle
“A gripping, stylish, consistently entertaining novel.” —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Although Dennis McFarland’s new novel is brimming with the paranormal, its deepest mysteries have to do with the workings of our hearts and minds, and with the specters of family history.” —Redbook
From the Publisher
The New York Times hailed School for the Blind as "an accomplished novel--the language soars."The Chicago Tribune called the novel "an evocative, haunting story--beautifully constructed and told."
From the Inside Flap
g their only daughter off to boarding school, Cookson Selway and his wife, Ellen, travel to London to escape their empty, echoing house. But their quiet hotel has guests other than those on the register, and the vacation turns into a journey not only to another city but to another time. As Selway is drawn into a series of mysterious encounters with a young girl who died in a fall from his hotel window sixty years earlier, he finds that the shadowy rooms and characters of her life become more real to him than those of his own. An escapist with an alcoholic history, he secretly relishes the chance to move from his lackluster reality into the high drama of the girl's past. But as he begins to do so, he jeopardizes his marriage and the lives of those around him, and the consequences of his escape are far greater than he could ever have imagined.
About the Author
Dennis McFarland is a bestselling author of novels and stories. His short fiction has appeared in the American Scholar, the New Yorker, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, Best American Short Stories, and many other publications. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, where he has also taught creative writing. He lives in rural Vermont with his wife, writer and poet Michelle Blake.
