The House at the Edge of Night
By Catherine Banner
414 pages
What’s it about?
This novel follows four generations of the Esposito family on a small Mediterranean Island off the coast of Sicily. Filled with family, stories, folklore, and mysticism this novel spans almost 100 years of life among a small close-knit community.
What did it make me think about?
Stories- how much they matter. Should I read it?What a book! “EVEN THE ISLAND WAS UNSETTLED, dissatisfied, in those days. It had once been a volcano. Thought the islanders knew this, the volcano had lain quiet so long that they often forgot. And then sometimes it behaved oddly, smoldering with faint recollections of its past.”
Written with a hint of magical realism this novel will slowly surprise you. You will turn the last page and be sad to leave the island of Castellamare and “The House at the Edge of the Night”. I especially recommend it to any readers who have a fondness for Italy, Sicily, or the Mediterranean.
Quote-
“And yet she saw it through her mother’s eyes, too: saw how the streets she climbed were full of stale air, the pavements crusted with dog turds, the facades of the church and the shops peeling, and every inhabitant in some phase of advanced age. The kind of place one could not love without effort, and yet, she understood now, the only place on the face of the whole earth that she herself loved.”What’s it about?
This novel follows four generations of the Esposito family on a small Mediterranean Island off the coast of Sicily. Filled with family, stories, folklore, and mysticism this novel spans almost 100 years of life among a small close-knit community.
What did it make me think about?
Stories- how much they matter.
Should I read it?
What a book! “EVEN THE ISLAND WAS UNSETTLED, dissatisfied, in those days. It had once been a volcano. Thought the islanders knew this, the volcano had lain quiet so long that they often forgot. And then sometimes it behaved oddly, smoldering with faint recollections of its past.”
Written with a hint of magical realism this novel will slowly surprise you. You will turn the last page and be sad to leave the island of Castellamare and “The House at the Edge of the Night”. I especially recommend it to any readers who have a fondness for Italy, Sicily, or the Mediterranean.
Quote-
“And yet she saw it through her mother’s eyes, too: saw how the streets she climbed were full of stale air, the pavements crusted with dog turds, the facades of the church and the shops peeling, and every inhabitant in some phase of advanced age. The kind of place one could not love without effort, and yet, she understood now, the only place on the face of the whole earth that she herself loved.”
