The Gravedigger's Cottage

by Chris Lynch

Overview

The move to a lovely seaside cottage unravels the McLuckie family’s tight spool of emotions The McLuckie family has not been so lucky. After losing two wives, Mr. McLuckie has been left with one child from each love: ten-year-old Walter and fourteen-year-old Sylvia. He decides to move the family to a new home, a ramshackle seaside cottage called the Gravedigger’s Cottage, where they can start anew. But soon Mr. McLuckie starts acting strangely, taking a leave of absence from work and becoming obsessed with fixing leaks, stockpiling canned foods, and chasing a mysterious rat. Then, Sylvia and Walter hear the rumor of the Gravedigger’s Cottage: the house “chooses” its occupants. How will the McLuckies get the fresh start they so desperately need?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781480404786
Publisher:	Open Road Media
Publication date:	03/26/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	12 - 18 Years

About the Author

Chris Lynch (b. 1962), a Boston native, is an award-winning author of several acclaimed young adult novels, including Freewill (2001), which won the Michael L. Printz Honor, and National Book Award finalist Inexcusable (2005). Lynch holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College, and teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Lesley University. He mentors aspiring writers and continues to work on new literary projects while splitting time between Boston and Scotland.       
Chris Lynch (b. 1962), a Boston native, is an award-winning author of several acclaimed young adult novels, including Freewill (2001), which won the Michael L. Printz Honor, and National Book Award finalist Inexcusable (2005). Lynch holds an MA from the writing program at Emerson College, and teaches in the creative writing MFA program at Lesley University. He mentors aspiring writers and continues to work on new literary projects while splitting time between Boston and Scotland.

Editorial Reviews

"We won't dwell on that now," says narrator Vi McLuckie's dad whenever she tries to talk to him about any of their family's numerous bereavements, which include two Mrs. McLuckies as well as an extensive parade of pets. His refrain serves as the guiding metaphor of this idiosyncratic novel: Mr. McLuckie, having watched Vi bury so many pets in their yard, decides literally not to dwell on that property anymore, and moves the family to a cottage in a coastal village. The novel opens as 14-year-old Vi and her 10-year-old brother, Walter, discover that their new home is locally known as the Gravedigger's Cottage, aka The Diggers, for reasons that no one can fully explain to them. "The house just attracts people who have, sort of, histories of death stuff attached to them," says a girl, who adds, "You don't move into The Diggers, it moves into you." Writing in the sharp, evocative prose and overcast mood of his Freewill, Lynch alternates the story line about the move into The Diggers with Vi's recollections of the deaths in the McLuckie family, starting with those of Vi's mother and of Walter's mother, then growing more graphic in descriptions of run-over pet dogs, starved and dehydrated finches, mysteriously shriveling turtles, suffocated gray dwarf Russian hamsters, etc. The link between these passages and the message, about the impossibility of escaping from an unexamined past, never becomes explicit, and readers may have trouble seeing beyond the many disconcerting (if not downright unpleasant) death scenes to discover the point. Ages 12-up. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Gr 7 Up-The author of such literary and emotionally provocative young adult novels as Gypsy Davey (1998) and Freewill (2001, both HarperCollins) offers another dark and clever fable. The badly named McLuckies-father and two children-move to a somewhat ramshackle oceanside house, which the neighboring villagers call the Gravedigger's Cottage. Recounted by teenage Sylvia, a story of dead pets and parental distraction unfolds to reveal how psychologically delicate the McLuckies truly are, in spite of their individual protestations that it is the rest of the world, not themselves, that lacks integrity. The protagonist's younger brother, Walter, brings home a weird neighbor child who begins by professing his love for Sylvia and then goads the family members into seeing that they are not the brave crew they have been pretending to be. While character development and plot work well in alternate chapters, they come to a standstill in the interspersed sections, each of which revolves around the presence and eventual death of a family pet. This device becomes not only relentlessly grim but also repetitive, numbing readers' concern for either the animals or their owners. The pun on the house's name is protracted and also becomes overly obvious. The eventual catharsis between father and children is sweet, but those who revel in the dourness of the tale to that point may dismiss the climax as too fairy tale. At the same time, those who search for happy endings may not have the stomach to weather the destruction of small animal life and young egos along the way.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

An old gravedigger's cottage and its nearby beach are the setting for this mournful, slightly creepy family story. Fourteen-year-old Sylvia moves there with her 10-year-old brother, Walter, and their sad, eccentric father for a fresh start far away from the place where both Sylvia's and Walter's mothers died. A long string of pets died there too. Death weighs heavily on all three members of this strongly bonded family. Sylvia loves the odd cottage but Dad seems to be folding over into himself as, grief-bent, he begins manic home-improvement projects rather than going to his job. Sylvia and Walter try to boss him into not being crazy, all the while worried they'll lose him. In a unique, deliberate voice, Sylvia resists responsibility for her father even while accepting it. A little morbid, very loving, and dubiously hopeful at the end about Dad's mental state-and whether their newest pet might actually live. (Fiction. 10-14)

Kirkus Reviews