The High House

JAMES STODDARD

ISBN 10: 0671022083 / ISBN 13: 9780671022082

Published by SIMON & SCHUSTER LTD, 1998

Readable copy. Pages may have considerable notes/highlighting. ~ ThriftBooks: Read More, Spend Less. Seller Inventory # G0671022083I5N00

Synopsis:

The High House is not visited by chance, and those who inhabit it do so for a very long time. Worlds and universes exist within its rooms, waiting to be explored by the book's hero and readers alike.

Review: There is a house we know from dreams whose corridors connect to everything, whose endlessly rewound clocks keep the stars from falling, who are the pulse of life itself. And that house has its wardens, and young Carter Anderson is its heir. Stoddard's fantasy is, in the best sense of the word, reactionary; it inhabits the same moral universe and the same sense of the decorative and bizarre as Victorian classics like MacDonald's Lilith. Its villains, a bunch of anarchists in revolt against the nature of the universe itself, are, in a sense, nightmares that unite Edwardian fantasists like Chesterton with our own time; the doctrines of equality and levelling they preach are subversive of fantasy itself, or of the reasons we read it, and in a fantasy context they both attract and repel. Stoddard's inventions--the dinosaur in the attic, a hereditary guild of polishers--are at once original and creations that fit into a grand tradition. At the core of the book, also, is the story of how Carter grows into his responsibilities, and how his estranged brother comes to respect him. This is a remarkable debut novel, simply by deigning to learn from grand old stuff. --Roz Kaveney

Bibliographic Details

Title: The High House
Publisher: SIMON & SCHUSTER LTD
Publication Date: 1998
Binding: Paperback
Condition: Fair
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket