Grief Cottage
A Novel
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ISBN10: 1632867052
ISBN13: 9781632867056
Paperback
336 Pages
$18.00
CA$24.50
After his mother's death, eleven-year-old Marcus is sent to live on a small South Carolina island with his great aunt, a reclusive painter with a haunted past. Aunt Charlotte, otherwise a woman of few words, points out a ruined cottage, telling Marcus she had visited it regularly after she'd moved there thirty years ago because it matched the ruin of her own life. Eventually she was inspired to take up painting so she could capture its utter desolation.
The islanders call it "Grief Cottage," because a boy and his parents disappeared from it during a hurricane fifty years before. Their bodies were never found and the cottage has stood empty ever since. During his lonely hours while Aunt Charlotte is in her studio painting and keeping her demons at bay, Marcus visits the cottage daily, building up his courage by coming ever closer, even after the ghost of the boy who died seems to reveal himself. Full of curiosity and open to the unfamiliar and uncanny given the recent upending of his life, he courts the ghost boy, never certain whether the ghost is friendly or follows some sinister agenda.
Grief Cottage is the best sort of ghost story, but it is far more than that—an investigation of grief, remorse, and the memories that haunt us.
Reviews
Praise for Grief Cottage
"Grief Cottage revisits some of [Godwin's] favorite themes—fractured families, parentless children, the initial shock and long-term repercussions of death and disappearance, how the future can run off course in a flash—to make the very good point that it doesn't require a ghost to haunt a life."—The New York Times
"Godwin may flirt with the magical, but she deals firmly with the realism of depression and loss. It's those psychological ghosts that Grief Cottage is really about."—The Washington Post
"Grief Cottage is less a paranormal thriller than an exploration of the psyche's creative tactics to survive trauma . . . Godwin [uses] the fragile link between living and spirit to illuminate a young man's coming of age."—BookPage
"This grace-filled story probes aspects of life and death, isolation and family, and how great pain and loss can ultimately lead to unforeseen transcendence."—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
"Can the needs of the living and dead sometimes merge? Eleven-year-old Marcus's desire to believe so leads him, and us, on a harrowing and unforgettable journey toward an answer."—Ron Rash, author of The Risen and Above the Waterfall
"Marcus' fascination with the ghostly presence of an adolescent boy, thought to have perished at Grief Cottage in a hurricane, allows Godwin to explore themes of loss, connection, and growth unfettered by the corporeal world."—Kirkus Reviews
"Godwin's riveting and wise story of the slow coalescence of trust and love between a stoic artist and a grieving boy . . . subtly and insightfully explores different forms of haunting and vulnerability, strength and survival."—Booklist (starred review)
"Grief Cottage concerns an orphan named Marcus and some ghosts, but it's really about how each of us is haunted, even when we don't acknowledge it."—Lit Hub
"Gail Godwin convincingly expands the meanings of haunting well beyond the appearance of the ghost-boy who triggers Marcus Harshaw's uncanny—and canny—journey of self-discovery."—Washington Independent Review of Books
"Godwin, a three-time National Book Award finalist, mixes horror and mystery tropes with literary musings on growing up and growing old. The result is a sort of supernatural bildungsroman, less a traditional ghost story and more a cautionary tale about the specter of impermanence."—Atlanta Journal Constitution
"A stately meditation on loss and longing."—Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "Summer Reads"
"Godwin handles the supernatural deftly. It's up to the reader whether Marcus actually sees something or is letting his imagination run riot."—Star News (Wilmington, NC)