April 18, 2022
In the well-crafted latest from Belfer (And After the Fire), Manhattan art historian Hannah Larson puts her career on hold to give her son, Nicky, who suffers from violent outbursts, the constant care he needs. When Hannah’s uncle invites her and Nicky to spend the summer in England, she’s just discovered that her husband, Kevin, is having an affair, and welcomes the respite from marital tensions. Hannah and nine-year-old Nicky are fascinated by Ashton Hall, the ancient Cambridgeshire manor in which her uncle leases an apartment. Exploring an abandoned wing, Nicky discovers a skeleton in a room that’s walled up except for a single small opening. The body is identified as that of Isabella Cresham, a late–16th-century member of the family that once owned the Hall, and some of the artifacts found nearby suggest that Isabella was a Catholic despite her era’s brutal religious strictures. Hannah, herself feeling trapped due to financial dependence on Kevin, who refuses to end his affair, is drawn to Isabella’s story. As she gleans details of Isabella’s life from sketchbooks and ledgers found in another room in the house, she struggles to chart her own future. Without slipping into country house clichés or simplistic parallels, Belfer offers a nuanced exploration of the ways women’s lives are constricted. Anglophiles and Tudor history buffs will enjoy this immersive tale.
Starred review from June 10, 2024
Hannah Larson and her young son, Nicky, arrive in England to spend the summer with an ill relative who rents an apartment on the titular estate. Nicky's explorations of the older parts of the building lead to a macabre discovery: the skeleton of a woman who had been bricked into a small room centuries earlier. Hannah, who left academia before finishing her PhD, is reeling from the discovery of her husband's longtime infidelity and is happy to carve out time for herself assisting with research. She uses journals and drawings found in the woman's cell to investigate 16th-century life on the estate, the woman's identity, and the events that led up to her being sealed inside the wall. Belfer's (And After the Fire) latest demonstrates extraordinary research into the Tudor era and modern-day preservation of historical buildings and ephemera. It's both a gripping mystery and a thoughtful character study, as Hannah struggles to balance different elements of her identity and figure out the life she wants to live. Narrators Kristen Sieh and Jayne Entwistle beautifully inhabit the wide variety of characters. VERDICT Essential listening for fans of historical fiction and contemporary considerations of marriage, motherhood, and identity.--Stephanie Klose
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