The Wish House

by Celia Rees Narrated by Christopher Cazenove

Overview

Richard has hung out at the abandoned house in the woods during his summer vacation for as long as he can remember. But this year, he discovers that a family has moved in. The father, J. A. Dalton, is an internationally renowned artist who insists on painting Richard's portrait, while Dalton's wife draws the boy into her circle as though he were one of the family's bohemian adult friends.
But it is their beautiful daughter, Clio, with whom Richard becomes obsessed. Soon he finds ways to spend days-and nights-with Clio, all the while struggling to understand and fit in with her eccentric clan. How can he know that some mysteries are best left unsolved-and that the passions of a single summer will change his life forever?

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

Although Rees's (Witch Child) story of the life-changing summer when Richard was 15 begins with an air of mystery ("first real kiss, first true love, first sex. First death"), the true thrust of the novel is an exploration of the nature of creativity and life on the fringes of society. The author begins in 1982, as Richard, now 21, enters a gallery where his image plays a starring role in the erotic exhibition on display. The paintings touch off flashbacks to the summer of 1976 in Wales, six years earlier, when he first meets the artist, Jethro Arnold ("Jay") Dalton, and his family. Rees fluidly incorporates the image of each painting and the events surrounding it; the Daltons' home, the Wish House of the title, is simultaneously grand and decaying, seductive and forbidding. The backdrop, too, evokes an era when joints, open marriages, and running naked on the beach were common. Clio, the artist's teenage daughter, fascinates and enthralls Richard, and the two soon begin spending days exploring the woods and meadows, and the nights exploring each other. Eventually, Richard realizes there has been a terrible betrayal that changes his view of everything. Rees is at the top of her form. The "gallery notes" describing the works by Clio and her father anchor the story, told in third-person from Richard's point of view, while the solid characterizations carry along the flashback scenes. A top-notch look at first love, heartbreak, and the driving force of passion. Ages 14-up. (Sept.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up-Richard looks back on his 15th summer, when he was vacationing with his family in Wales. It was 1976 when his fate became inextricably entwined with that of an artistic, bohemian family. Naive, middle-class Richard is bowled over by temperamental J. A. Dalton, famous artist and father of the seductive Clio. She and virgin Richard begin an affair, and it is soon clear that he is in way over his head. There are dark family secrets and the torment of a volatile painter with artist's block. An air of unreality surrounds the teens, who put themselves in a fantasy world based on British mythology, an obsession of Jay's. The man's current wife, Lucia, is a witch with a garden of all black plants, many of which are poisonous. Richard is drawn into the allure of this skinny-dipping, pot-smoking world. Inevitably he realizes the depths of the family's betrayal and their calculated use of him. He then sets in motion a series of events that haunt him until he is 21 and finds redemption. Readers might be confused by the opening, but the agony and ecstasy of first love are well conveyed. This sinister and intense novel will surely appeal to teens eager to follow the twists and turns of a tangled, yet affecting tale.-B. Allison Gray, John Jermain Library, Sag Harbor, NY Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

An intense foray into first lust and the meanings of art in the summer of 1970 and six years later. Rees prefaces each chapter with a catalogue raisonne entry, an art critic's description or some other scrap of printed matter that sets the stage. In London's SoHo, a 21-year-old Richard goes to an invitation-only art gallery exhibiting Clio Dalton's work. The summer they were 15, Richard had stumbled over her and her family at the Wish House, where he and a buddy used to hang out in the summer when it was abandoned. Now, however, Clio, her mother Lucia and her artist father J.A. Dalton, and an ever-changing coterie of relatives, friends and hangers-on are spending the summer. Richard is closed, thoughtless and utterly confused by these free spirits; he is obsessed with Clio and her body and the lovely, imaginative games they play full of knights and quests. J.A. is also painting the golden, handsome Richard. There are no sympathetic characters here: Clio is manipulative and dangerous; J.A. is tortured and passionate; Richard's first sight of Lucia is of her lying naked on the lawn. Things end very badly, if predictably, indeed. Compelling for its examination of the darker side of desire both sexual and artistic. (Fiction. YA)

From the Publisher

A top-notch look at first love, heartbreak, and the driving force of passion.
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

DEC 07/JAN 08 - AudioFile

For mature teens, the story of Richard and Clio and their summer together draws on the theme of first love. Christopher Cazenove’s narration engages as the account of Richard and Clio’s time together moves between the past and the present. The story features descriptions of paintings from that summer by Clio’s famous father. One storytelling device juxtaposes the captions on the paintings with startling scenes from Clio’s unconventional family life, which Richard finds captivating. Casenove’s nuanced performance illuminates the deception that Richard experiences and its effect on him. The secret of what happened that summer is finally revealed at the end of the story. L.D.H. © AudioFile 2007, Portland, Maine

Product Details

BN ID:	2940172193644
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/13/2007
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

He froze in mid-step, intensely aware of his own paleness encased in hairy wool and khaki. He had not expected anyone to be here when he mounted the worn steps up to the garden. The big gray stone house had been deserted when he had come here with Dylan last summer. It had been empty for years and had become one of their special places, where they went to play and explore. It was called the Wish House, Dylan told him, because the trees around it seemed to be in constant motion. Even on a day as still as this, they seemed to whisper, "I wish . . . I wish . . ." It gave the house an extra creepiness that added spice to their visits. The sound was there now, mixed in with thinsounding, slightly discordant music made by stringed instruments and a drum. That was what had made Richard mount the steps, thinking he’d discovered something genuinely mysterious — until he saw this woman.

He tried to look away, but he couldn’t shift his focus. He held his hand up, as if to ward off the vision or to block it out of his own line of sight. He reached behind as though to steady himself on the warm lichen-embossed wall. He was beginning to sweat. He felt the dampness creeping through his hair, the beads break out on his forehead and upper lip.Should he go on? Should he go back? He did not know what to do.

The decision was made for him.

The woman rose up on one elbow, squinting at him, shading her eyes against the strong sun shining from behind him, the glare oflight shimmering up from the sea.

"Well, hello there. And who are you?"

_______

THE WISH HOUSE by Celia Rees. Copyright © 2006 by Celia Rees. Published by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.

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