The Town House

It looks like I'm falling behind on my book a week goal... I'm not, really, I just haven't had a lot of time to post about what I'm reading.  Plus, I took a magazine break.  Plus, I'm reading about 5 books at once so I'm not cranking them out like I usually do.  I figure as long as I have more than 52 entries at the end of the year I've pulled it off.  :)  Oh, and this is not a resolution, it's a goal, just for the record, since I just went on a mini-rant about how I don't make resolutions.  

Anyway, the latest was The Town House by Norah Lofts.  This is one of the books that my mom brought out, so I'm checking them out.  I am torn between this one.  On the one hand, it's cool that it was my grandpa's book.  It has his name stamped in it.  (Oh, by the way, if anybody's looking for a present, a book stamp would be much appreciated.)  On the other hand, this was... so depressing.  So very depressing...

The book is divided up into five "tales" told by five different people, separated by "intervals" that have a mysterious omniscient narrator.  I guess it's basically the story of Martin Reed, who narrates the first tale- beginning with his birth.  The different narrators talk mostly about events that directly or indirectly surround Martin's life, and the book ends with his death.  Oh, sorry, did I spoil it for you?  Well, too bad!  Because in all my life, I have never read a book where so many people just DIE.  They just keep kicking off right and left!  Let me prove it to you.

So we start with Martin's birth, then he falls in love, but he and his lady love have to skip out of town because the earl or somebody wants to violate her, and they run off to the next walled town.  (Oh, by the way, this is in about the year 1400.)  Well, Martin is a smith, but the local guilds won't hire him and all this terrible stuff happens to him.  He, his pseudo-wife and children are on the brink of death and starvation, and the world is about to end.  Just when you can't think this guy's misery can get any worse- and by the way, you really do sympathize with him and it really hurts to read this- the tide turns, and the world is wonderful.  He gets money, land, everything that he needs to make him and his pseudo-wife happy for the rest of their lives.  He rushes home to his wife- whom he was about to marry for real so they could finally have peace of mind- only to find she and his two children burned to death in their homeless hovel because some weird bear-trainer tried to rape her.  And thus ends Martin's tale.

We fast-forward to Agnes, a few years later, who has moved in to Martin's new house on his new land with him as the caretaking woman that all men appear to need.  Also living there is the weird bear-trainer- who lied about the fire that he caused and claimed he tried to save Martin's wife, so Martin feels obligated to him and lets him live comfortably to the end of his days.  Agnes hates Martin's replacement wife, and lets her bleed to death after giving birth to Martin's son.  

Forward to Anne, who is the object of Martin's son Richard's affection about 20 years later.  Anne marries Richard even though he's beneath her, but Richard can't "satisfy" her, so she cheats... gets pregnant with twins, but because of her twisted lies, manages to kill her lover and cause the accident that kills her beloved mother.  Her dad goes nuts, which is neat.  Then Richard (whom she really loves) dies just for the heck of it... must be so Martin can enjoy watching everybody around him drop off one by one.  Oh, I forgot to mention that at some random point both Agnes and the weird bear-trainer die, too, uneventfully 'cause dey was old.  

So, we go on to Anne's daughter Maude's tale... Maude is hated by her mother because her mother loves her twin brother better, but the twin brother is a bit of a rogue and never really calms down.  Maude goes off to some family finishing school, where she's miserable, but makes one friend who makes her life there complete, who, by the way, dies.  Maude decides to go into a convent to pray for her friend's soul to get her out of purgatory.  This is one cheery story.

On to Nicholas Freeman's tale- he's Martin's bookkeeper, or right-hand man or whatever- if you're keeping track, by the way, you're right, Martin's getting pretty old- and he decides he's in love with Maude when she comes back to the convent.  He spends a while figuring out how to ask her to marry him, gets his blessing from Martin and all the right stuff.  Well, Maude's twin brother dies - SHOCKER - and Nicholas retrieves her from the convent, ready to take the lady for his own.  Hm.  What's left here?  Could we have a happy ending?  Nope.  Martin, old coot that he is, dies and leaves everything to Nicholas.  This sounds great- the poor guy who lived a hard life knows that his granddaughter and beloved sidekick are going to live happily ever after in the Town House he created!  Finally, a point to the story!

Nope.  Some random guy from finishing school or whatever arrives, sweeps Maude off her feet and they ride away into the sunset.  Nicholas becomes a Cardinal.  Oh, by the way, this all happened in less than a page.  The last less-than-a-page of the entire book.  

Um... not sure what we're supposed to be doing here.  Enjoying the futility?  The irony?  Wondering why The Town House that is never actually called that is way out in the country?  I'm totally lost as to the purpose of this book.  But my guess is that Nicholas, the last narrator, eventually dies.

Run out and read this book, really.  Just don't have any knives or guns laying around close by, you'll likely want to kill yourself.