Rated 4 Stars
From: Connie
When I started reading this book I didn't think I was going to be able to get into it. It started so slow for me. I almost lost interest in reading it when the author spent so much time phaffing around setting up for the story. Lucky for me I stuck with it long enough to get interested. I get the feeling that the author had fun writing this story and therefore it makes it fun to read.
I am having a little trouble picking up on the Pride and Prejudice aspect of the story though. I am channeling more Sense and Sensibility with the three Lockwell (Dashwood) sisters and Mr. Rafferty (Willoughby) And I did have to laugh at the gothic Mr. Rochester (Mr. Quent) and the locked upper room that the housekeeper makes sinister allusions to. (shades of Grace Pool) I never did figure out who in the world Mr. Garritt was a parody of and also wondered and if the Highway Man had anything to do with ghostly galleons tossed upon storm swept clouds?
Product Description:
Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë and H.P. Lovecraft collide in Beckett's periodically entertaining debut. Young Ivy Lockwell, the unmarried daughter of a family stricken with poverty after her magician father went mad, travels from her home in Invarel, a mirror of Austen-era London, to become a governess at the country estate of Heathcrest, a Bronte-analogue complete with mysterious Rochester stand-in, Mr. Quent. As a woman, she is forbidden to perform magic and consoles herself with the study of magical history, discovering an ancient story still working its will on the world. Treading a fine line between homage and unoriginality, Invarel occasionally sparkles with descriptions of illusionist shows and quasi-fascist government activity, but Heathcrest is lifted part and parcel from Jane Eyre, and Beckett relies too much on references to that work to fuel emotional arcs and reader attachment.
