The House at Midnight: A Novel

by Lucie Whitehouse, Kate Reading (Narrated by)

Overview

From a promising young author, a gripping psychological debut novel in the tradition of The Secret History and The Big Chill.

After the suicide of his uncle, Lucas Heathfield inherits Stoneborough Manor in Oxfordshire. His best friend Joanna imagines it as a place where their tight-knit group of friends can escape London and rekindle the revelry of their college days. But from the beginning, the house has a strange effect on everyone who stays there. Much to Joanna's surprise, she embarks on a romantic relationship with Lucas, who has loved her for many years, and watches as he becomes haunted by the death of his uncle and obsessed by the house's past, a past that hints at disturbing parallels between the generations who have inhabited it.

Meanwhile Lucas's other close friend, Danny, sees the house as an opportunity. In spite of Joanna's objections, he moves in and sets about using Lucas's new wealth to his own advantage. But the longer the pair spends at Stoneborough, the more they lose perspective on the real world and the morals that apply there. Danny's charm causes casual devastation amongst the group, a process almost as alarming to Joanna as his identification of with Lucas's charismatic dead uncle, Patrick, and his fascination with Justin, Lucas's dead father.

Within the claustrophobic confines of the manor over a hot, decadent summer, secrets slide out and sexual tensions escalate, shattering the group's friendship and changing their lives forever.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780739368619
Publisher:	Books on Tape, Inc.
Publication date:	06/17/2008
Edition description:	Unabridged

About the Author

Lucie Whitehouse was born in the Cotswolds, grew up near Stratford-upon-Avon, and now lives in London. She studied classics at Oxford University, where she edited the newspaper Cherwell. The House at Midnight is her first novel and was inspired by her love of the English countryside and large atmospheric houses at nightfall.


From the Hardcover edition.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER I

Even now, I can remember the first time I saw the house as clearly as if there were a video of it playing in my head.
Danny, Martha, and I had driven up from London together, the force of our collective will keeping my elderly Citroen from one of its increasingly frequent breakdowns. Cold night air had forced its way into the car around the loose windowpanes as I coaxed it along at speeds for which I could feel it reproaching me. I think we all had a feeling of adventure that evening, leaving the city as so many other people had been pouring into it, going against the tide.
Lucas's directions had been easy to follow until the last part. We came off the motorway and soon were lost in the maze of minor roads that laced across southern Oxfordshire.A part of me was glad;I wanted to be ready before seeing him, but the miles had disappeared too quickly. The half hour we spent shuttling along the same dark lanes again and again had given me time to think. Finally I pulled up at the side of the road in the village we had been circling.

Danny leaned forward between the seats."This place is like the end of the world."

He was right. Even for a village, Stoneborough was nothing. The cottages, five or six of them huddled together, had an empty air; only one was showing any light, the blue wash of television seeping through the net curtain in an upstairs window.There was a pond,its edges sharp with frozen reeds, and a village green that was little more than a patch of crisp white grass. No one had been across it since the dew fell.

"We can't go round again," I said. "We're going to have to ask."

"Can't we call him?" said Martha.

"There's no reception."

Across the road was a pub called the White Swan, a squat stone building whose roof covered it like an oversized hat. The upper windows looked out slyly from underneath. On the ground floor the curtains were drawn, but a rim of yellow light was visible around them.

"It's like the place doesn't want to be found," said Martha. She opened the passenger door and got out. Her usual long stride curtailed by the cocktail dress that clung tightly above her knees, she crossed the beam of the headlights and went in.

The radio was too loud now that the car had stopped so I turned it off.Danny leaned forward again."It had better not be much further.It's gone nine--I'm dying for a drink." His breath carried an unmistakable whisky tang.

"You've been taking nips from that hip flask all the way. I've seen you in the rearview." I twisted round to look at him. The light from the pub's carriage lamp cast the planes of his face into sharp relief. He looked elfish.

"It's New Year's Eve, Joanna."

"Light me a cigarette, will you?" I asked. "Mine are in the boot." He rummaged around among the newspapers on the backseat and found the packet. The match flared and died. "Thanks."

"Your hands are shaking."

"Are they?" I held one out flat and observed my fingers in the light from the dash."Maybe it's the thought of the big house.These things intimidate English teachers' daughters, you know." I shrugged and wound down the window to blow out the smoke. It was a policy I had developed with Danny: to reveal my weakness rather than give him the pleasure of discovering it himself.

"That's one of the things I like about you. You're always so honest about your humble beginnings." He sat back and started flicking through old text messages on his mobile.

"It'll be a thrill for me to be allowed above stairs."

Martha came out of the pub, the heavy wooden door slamming shut behind her. "That way, about a mile on. I think we...

Editorial Reviews

At 30, Londoner Joanna still spends her free time with her Oxford college friends, now with burgeoning careers and all on the cusp of real adulthood. Lucas, Joanna's closest friend and prolonged crush, inherits Stoneborough Manor, a huge and imposing house in the Cotswold countryside filled with priceless art, where all the college friends are to spend every weekend together. The first visit, on New Year's Eve, doesn't start well, as the Londoners get lost. To Joanna, the manor has a threatening and unsettling aura, and indeed, the big, dark, vaguely confusing house with its secrets and disappointments works well as an allegory for moving into the responsibilities and fears of growing up. Joanna and her friends proceed to deal with the unknown, some well, others destructively. A focus on the shifting relationships and loyalties doesn't leave much room for plot, but Joanna's voice is engaging, and Londoner Whitehouse, making her debut, manages to generate a lot of interest in the somewhat flat Four Weddings and a Funeral-esque ensemble: she gets the insecurities, pedigrees and Cotswold locale spot on. Unfortunately, this promising first effort features a truncated ending that is less evocative than jarring. (June)

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