Three Story House
Three Story House by Courtney Miller Santo
Paperback, 416 pages
Published August 19th 2014 by William Morrow & Company
Renovating an historic Memphis house together, three cousins discover that their spectacular failures in love, career, and family provide the foundation for their future happiness in this warm and poignant novel from the author of The Roots of the Olive Tree that is reminiscent of The Postmistress, The Secret Life of Bees, and Kristin Hannah’s novels.
Nearing thirty and trying to avoid the inescapable fact that they have failed to live up to everyone’s expectations and their own aspirations, cousins and childhood best friends Lizzie, Elyse, and Isobel seek respite in an oddly-shaped, three-story house that sits on a bluff sixty feet above the Mississippi.
As they work to restore the almost condemned house, each woman faces uncomfortable truths about their own failings. Lizzie seeks answers to a long-held family secret about her father in her grandmother’s jumble of mementos and the home’s hidden spaces. Elyse’s obsession with an old flame leads her to a harrowing mistake that threatens to destroy her sister’s wedding, and Isobel’s quest for celebrity tempts her to betray confidences in ways that would irreparably damage her two cousins.
Told in three parts from the perspective of each of the women, this sharply observed account of the restoration of a house built out of spite, but filled with memories of love is also an account of friendship and how relying on each other’s insights and strengths provides the women a way to get what they need instead of what they want.
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My thoughts about Three Story House ~~
I love reading stories about women who are friends, or become friends because of the situation they find themselves in, and who lean on each other to help get through the tough times. Three Story House is such a story.
These three women, who are thrown together as young girls and became fast friends, all come together when Lizzie has to go back home to try and save the family home. While she is there, can she uncover her mother's secret and find out who her father really is? Her best friends, who also happen to be her cousins, Elyse and Isobel, join her there, lending her both physical and moral support. But it ends up that they are all there offering support to each other.
'"I like this house," Elyse interrupted. "It's a little pissed off, like all of us."'
The story is written in three parts, with each part being the story of, and told in the voice of, one of the main characters. The Triplins, as the three girls as a group are called, each have their own issues to work through and they discover they are right where they need to be, working on the house, and working on their lives.
'But she felt protective of Spite House and didn't want to leave it alone. Instead, she stood in the kitchen and looked at the torn-up wall and thought about Elyse, with her broken heart, and Lizzie with her broken leg. She supposed both were doing what Benny had been doing to Spite House. They were working on fixing the outward appearance of something without first finding all the damage that had been done.'
I absolutely loved Courtney's first book
The Roots of the Olive Tree when I read it last year (my thoughts about it are
here) and I loved that she connected that story to this one. It made me want to go back and read it all over again.
'"What does anyone know about their grandparents?" Elyse guessed that was true. She was among the lucky few who'd known not only her grandparents, but her great-grandparents well. Hell, last she heard, her father's great-grandmother was still alive on some olive farm in California.The women were as distant as they were legendary in the family.'
Once again, Courtney has written a story that I will remember and think about long after I leave that world. It is a great thing that she continues to write such amazing and beautiful stories.
About the author
Courtney Miller Santo teaches creative writing to college students and lives in Memphis with her husband, two children, and retired racing greyhound.
Connect with Courtney
Thank you, TLC Tours for the ARC copy in exhange for my honest review.
This giveaway is going to run for 3 weeks instead of my normal 2 weeks. Why? Because hubby and I will be on our Alaskan Cruise!!! Posts will be very sparse to non-existent while we are gone and I'll pick a winner when we get back.
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