The orotahonist/heroine unfortunately comes across as something of a simpleton (rather than as an intelligent, though rather naive and impressionable young woman, as in those earlier classic works). instead, I found The Ancestor written in such broad stoke, lacking in nuance, as to read as parody rather than smart modern "take" on the genre, or as homage. The New York Times book review, which invoked Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey ( which, in turn and at its time, head invoked The Castle of Otranto) made me expect much, much more.
I was really looking forward to this, as a bit of fun neo-gothic escapism. Inferior modern gothic, more parody than homage
You will have considered all the issues of contact and will never feel the same about the Alps or flat feet. Despite these plot issues, the author provides a sense of place that will make you feel you have experienced Italy’s northern Alpine region and you have experienced what it might be like to meet a tribe of distant hominid ancestors. We are told her husband has skills that are needed in organizing the various businesses, yet she doesn’t try to assert her right to bring him in. She strangely makes no case for her staff to organize a helicopter for her husband’s visit when the future of the family depends on her having a child. She is attacked by an employee’s dog, and held prisoner in the castle, failing to assert her rights as heir. The main character, however, repeatedly behaves in an unbelievably passive manner when told she is the new heir and boss. The story of (spoiler) the role of the icemen in the narrator’s life provocatively unfolds to lead us to think about what it means to be human.
As Bert begins to unravel the Montebianco secrets, she begins to realize her true inheritance lies not in a legacy of ancestral treasures, but in her very genes. But her ancestry has a dark side, and Bert soon learns that her family history is particularly complicated.
While Bert is more than a little skeptical, the mystery of her aristocratic family’s past, and the chance to escape her stressful life for a luxury holiday in Italy, is too good to pass up.Īt first, her inheritance seems like a dream come true: a champagne-drenched trip on a private jet to Turin, Italy lawyers with lists of artwork and jewels bequeathed to Bert a helicopter ride to an ancestral castle nestled in the Italian Alps below Mont Blanc a portrait gallery of ancestors Bert never knew existed and a cellar of expensive vintage wine for Bert to drink. It feels like a fairy tale when Alberta ”Bert” Monte receives a letter addressed to “Countess Alberta Montebianco” at her Hudson Valley, New York, home that claims she’s inherited a noble title, money, and a castle in Italy.
#Murder in the alps chapter 3 cellar puzzle series#
From the New York Times, USA Today, and internationally best-selling author of the Angelology series comes a bewitching gothic novel of suspense that plunges listeners into a world of dark family secrets, the mysteries of human genetics, and the burden of family inheritance.
0 kommentar(er)
