Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Whether it was this author's intention or not, she succeeded in making me dislike three of the members of the family who are pivotal to this story. Charlotte Torrington Swift is the mother of Emerald and Clovis. The novel states they are nineteen and twenty respectively, but that tripped me up somewhat because on the day this story happens Emerald is having her twentieth birthday. So at this point they are both twenty? But don't worry about that little detail, there will be much more serious problems with this novel than to worry about how many months there were between the births of Charlotte's two eldest children. All three of these characters are self-indulgent, conceited, arrogant, lazy, and cruel in certain ways. How was I ever supposed to enjoy the book when the characters were so unlikeable? The story takes place in the early 1900's on an isolated English country estate which has been the home of the Torrington children all their lives. Now, because of the late Horace Torrington's heavy debts, the estate will be lost unless Edward Swift, Charlotte's second husband, can acquire a loan from a man he despises. Edward lost one arm in a carriage accident when he was a young man and these two insensitive and cruel "children" actually make fun of him and use this as one reason they dislike him so much. (Even this early on in the novel I was rooting for Edward to not get the loan, chuck the bums out, and tell them to get their hands dirty and do something useful.) So, back to our synopsis. Guests begin to arrive for Emerald's birthday celebration dinner later in the evening but along with them come a group of people who were in a railway disaster which resulted in many deaths. The Swift home is to be used until the railroad company can arrange for these people to be accommodated elsewhere. Among this group comes someone from Charlotte's past. I really don't think I've ever read a novel which portrayed characters showing such callous disregard for the suffering of others. I understand it was a necessary part of the story, but I kept finding myself shaking my head in disbelief. I was very disappointed in the novel because I had been looking forward to reading it so much. This is one where I should have adhered to my 100 page rule. I didn't like the first 100 pages but I kept on reading. The next 160 did not get any better at all. I think the author tried to be different, quirky, clever and so she wrote in an older style and tried to start with her characters at their worst in order to rehabilitate them along the way, but that process took much too long for it to work for me. The only reason for two stars from me instead of one is that I have recently found the absolute worst book I've ever read. This is marginally better than that one.