Rooms

by Lauren Oliver

Overview

After a number of highly acclaimed New York Times bestsellers, including the Delirium trilogy and the standalone novels Before I Fall and Panic, Lauren Oliver returns with a spellbinding tale that confirms her place as one of our finest storytellers. Fueled by the same inspired feel for plot and character that drew readers to Oliver's earlier works, Rooms is a mesmerizing and suspenseful story of guilt, love, and family secrets.

Estranged patriarch Richard Walker has died, leaving behind a country house full of rooms packed with the detritus of a lifetime. His alienated family—bitter ex-wife Caroline, troubled teenage son Trenton, and unforgiving daughter Minna—have arrived for their inheritance.

But the Walkers are not alone. Alice and Sandra, two long-dead and restless ghosts, linger within the house's claustrophobic walls, bound eternally to its physical structure. Jostling for space and memory, they observe the family, trading barbs and reminiscences about their past lives. Though their voices cannot be heard, Alice and Sandra speak through the house itself—in the hiss of the radiator, a creak in the stairs, the dimming of a lightbulb.

The living and dead are haunted by painful truths that surface with explosive force. When a new ghost appears, and Trenton begins to communicate with her, the spirit and human worlds collide—with cataclysmic results.

Elegantly constructed and brilliantly paced, Rooms is an enticing and imaginative ghost story and a searing family drama that is as haunting as it is resonant.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062223210
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	09/23/2014
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	246,574
File size:	795 KB

About the Author

Lauren Oliver is the author of the YA bestselling novels Before I Fall, Panic, and Vanishing Girls and the Delirium trilogy: Delirium, Pandemonium, and Requiem, which have been translated into more than thirty languages and are New York Times and international bestselling novels. She is also the author of three novels for middle grade readers: The Spindlers; Liesl & Po, which was an E. B. White Read Aloud Award nominee; and Curiosity House: The Shrunken Head, co-written with H. C. Chester, and a novel for adults, Rooms. A graduate of the University of Chicago and NYU’s MFA program, Lauren Oliver is also the cofounder of the boutique literary development company Paper Lantern Lit.

Editorial Reviews

★ 06/02/2014
YA-bestseller Oliver’s (Before I Fall) assured adult debut skillfully weaves an innovative ghost story into a nuanced domestic drama. Upon Richard Walker’s death, his scattered family returns to clear out his house, which they hope to inherit. His ex-wife, Caroline, soothes bad marital memories with alcohol. His grown daughter, Minna, brings along her own six-year-old daughter, Amy, and a deep-seated resentment of her father, while his suicidal son, Trenton, struggles with teenage angst in the aftermath of a debilitating car accident. Trenton first senses the haunting presence of others in the home. The spirits of Alice and Sandra, two women who lived in the house at different times, now find themselves confined there together, squabbling with each other as they watch the family cope with Richard’s messy legacy. Soon a new female spirit close to Trenton’s age enters the house, and Alice conceives a dangerous plan to free herself of its prison. Oliver makes vivid use of both dead and living characters—all of whom are trapped in the past and striving toward a happier existence—to narrate her intricate, suspenseful story. The house’s breathing residents and ghosts alike find freedom, and the story culminates with an ending that arrives in dramatic and surprising ways. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

A chilling ghost story, and much, much more: Rooms is a magnificent gothic fugue on the themes of longing and buried secrets.”-Lev Grossman, bestselling author of The Magicians Trilogy

—Lev Grossman

…in this spectral soap opera there’s fun to be had as the plot’s many traps are set and then snapped shut.

New York Times

A spirited new novel.

W Magazine

Best-selling young adult novelist Lauren Oliver, author of Before I Fall and the Delirium trilogy, enters new territory with Rooms, her first novel for adults—though spooky supernatural elements remain.

Wall Street Journal

[A] fantastic ghost story…. Highly recommend.

Top 10 Books for September 2014 Washingtonian

ROOMS is, overall, a very successful work, and an impressive demonstration of Oliver’s craft.

NPR

In Oliver’s moody and mysterious novel, a pair of ghosts inhabits the house of the recently deceased Richard Walker and serves as an invisible chorus to his family’s bleak memories and motivations.

O magazine

Oliver’s first adult novel is packed with complex, flawed characters, and she manages to turn the ghosts’ observations into a story about how people are haunted by memories. It’s like a Wes Anderson movie in book form, with ghosts.

io9

Lauren Oliver leaves the young-adult realm with her latest novel, in which the living and dead intersect, and family secrets are unearthed when you least expect it.

San Francisco Chronicle

[Oliver’s] first novel for adults, Rooms, is a ghost story, but is completely unlike any we’ve read before… an elegant blend of real and supernatural worlds.

BookPage

Oliver skillfully weaves her tales together clearly and cleanly… The real strength of this novel is Oliver’s knack for rendering charmingly flawed characters with real-life problems and complicated relationships… Oliver’s prose is crisp and clean; it gives the book much of its energy.

Washington Independent Review of Books

Pleasantly spooky.

New York Times Book Review

A family faces its demons-such as sex addiction and alcoholism-when they gather after Dad’s death. (Adding stress: His house has ghosts!) A complex first adult novel from the Delirium writer.

Us Weekly

[Oliver] turns triumphantly to adult fiction with her latest, Rooms… The last 50 pages of Rooms are as devastatingly emotional as any book I’ve recently encountered… For a thriller, that’s as strong a recommendation as I can make.

Dallas Morning News

[A] sweet-but-sad-totally-engrossing-reading-at-stop-lights-in-the-car kind of tale… A fabulous read-good for a mature tween straight on up.

Chicago Now

04/01/2014
Oliver has already triumphed in the YA arena with Before I Fall and the "Delirium" trilogy; her first novel for adults has already been called "a magnificent gothic fugue on the themes of longing and buried secrets" by Time critic Lev Grossman, author of "The Magicians" trilogy. After Richard Walker dies, his embittered ex-wife and two sullen children arrive at his overstuffed mansion to claim their inheritance. The house also comes with two ghosts who exchange observations that no one can hear—until a new ghost starts communing with Walker's son. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Library Journal

2014-07-24
A smoky and realistic ghost story that subverts cliché. This first adult novel from Oliver (Panic, 2013, etc.), a best-selling writer for teens, has two standard horror tales at its foundation. First, a ghost story in which the ghosts can't leave the house but don't know why. Second, an estranged family story in which the ex-husband dies, leaving his alcoholic ex-wife, angry daughter and disaffected teen son to clean out their former home, not knowing that it's haunted. When the stories collide, they make a novel that's greater than the sum of its parts. The ghosts and people here have a surprising amount in common—on both sides of the veil, there is pain, regret and a lot of irritation with one's counterparts. That the book succeeds is due in large part to Oliver's characters. Though some are flat in internal monologue, most come to life when interacting with each other, as Oliver's ear for dialogue is finely tuned. She's able to take the tropes of the traditional ghost story and give them new energy by creating ghosts who are realistic but still terrifyingly paranormal. The story is well-served by Oliver's sense of drama, though she seems unable to resist ending each chapter with some sort of meaningful cliffhanger, like "I pretended not to notice his wedding ring the whole time." These touches aren't necessary, thanks to her careful unfolding of each character's secret, and weaken an otherwise compelling set of stories. Nevertheless, the book is a page-turner. This satisfying novel will be enjoyed by Oliver's fans and bring new ones to the fold.

Kirkus Reviews