NOTE: I DIDN'T CHOOSE THIS BOOK, BUT RATHER GOT ASKED TO REVIEW IT BY MY EDITOR WHEN I WAS WRITING FOR MY UNIVERSITY NEWSPAPER QUITE A FEW YEARS AGO NOW.This haunting novel tells the story of Lila’s fifteenth summer. Free from school, Lila’s summer looks unremarkable, with only her mother’s hysterics and frequent playing of Puccini’s Turandot to break the monotony of life in small town Burnhead, on the west coast of Scotland. Everything changes, however, when her Uncle George, a music teacher from London, arrives. Sensing that something needs to happen, he decides a stage an amateur production of Turandot, a difficult show even for experienced opera companies. Turandot is an opera of passion, love, death, and sacrifice, and as Lila is drawn into the production, she finds herself becoming lost somewhere between opera and life. This is the summer when Lila first sings, and first falls in love. Self-absorbed and longing for escape, Lila barely notices the production for the chaos it is becoming, swept up in her plans for a future that cannot be. When Lila Du Cann the retired opera singer returns home to Burnhead to bury her father she is confronted again by the memories of that fateful summer. Relieving her memories she reveals to us the story of that summer in 1960, and the madness of Turandot. This novel is creatively and beautifully told, with amazing imagery which truly enables the reader to take part in the story. However I found that while, the story itself did draw me in and kept me reading, I did not actually enjoying the book. It was well written and an excellent read, but not an enjoyable one. I am not able to place my finger on exactly what it is that I did not enjoy about this book, I think perhaps it was a combinations of story itself, and the themes and issues dealt with; the unhappiness, longing and claustrophobic love of the Duncan family is something I am not familiar with and could not quite understand.I personally found this book difficult to relate to and a little too dark and grim for my taste. However, I am sure there are many who this book would appeal to, and who would be able to connect with it. It explores the relationships of this family with what can only be called insight, and gently exposes the characters for what and who they are. It is certainly not a light hearted book, but deals verily and deftly with a grimmer side of human nature. All in all, it is a good read, but an odd read.
Morag Joss is one of my favorite authors but her novels are dark, with little included to lighten them even the slightest, and this novel is no exception. It is about a family and their attempt to put on an opera (Puccini's unfinished 'Turandot'), the first of its kind in the remote town of Burnhead in Scotland. Every character has secrets and the sense of foreboding starts in the first chapter and doesn't stop until the end, when the harshest secrets are revealed in the worst possible ways. Except for the father, Raymond, and to some extent, the narrator (our main character, Lila), no one is really a sympathetic person, at least not until the end, when you realize most of the characters are just sad and pathetic, not hateful. Very well written but VERY depressing.
What do You think about Puccini's Ghosts (2006)?
The book was quite slow, so I got bored with it and put it down, and now, after months of it resting unfinished in my shelf, I've opened it to see what fateful thing happens to Lila's opera and family. When I left it unfinished, I thought I didn't like the book, but now, after months, that I have revisited it, I see the point wherein I appreciate this novel. (though it might be bec I already forgot how bored I was with this before [don't get me wrong, I love historical and dark dramas, so...])Profound and poetic. Though I felt that the lives they live are quite dark and overly emotional, I have to affirm that these kinds of setups in living can highly affect the life of a child, that may take away the innocence of a little. I grieve for the characters because talented and smart as they may be, they have failed to live the lives they have dreamed of, and even failed to live the failures they fell into. This novel is yet another narration that tells us that whatever we do, we can hardly find atonement and resolution from the things that happened in the past.
—Skate Penny
