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Published Apr 2013
432 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Boston, 2000: Calliope Notaris Brown receives a shocking phone call. Her beloved uncle Nestor has passed away, and now Callie must fly to Patras, Greece, to claim her inheritance. Callie's mother, Clio - with whom Callie has always had a difficult relationship - tries to convince her not to make the trip. Unsettled by her mother's strange behavior, and uneasy about her own recent engagement, Callie decides to escape Boston for the city of her childhood summers. After arriving at the heady peak of Carnival, Callie begins to piece together what her mother has been trying to hide. Among Nestor's belongings, she uncovers clues to a long-kept secret that will alter everything she knows about her mother's past and about her own future.
Greece, 1940: Growing up in Patras in a prosperous family, Clio Notaris and her siblings feel immune to the oncoming effects of World War II, yet the Italian occupation throws their privileged lives into turmoil. Summers in the country once spent idling in the clover fields are marked by air-raid drills; the celebration of Carnival, with its elaborate masquerade parties, is observed at home with costumes made from soldiers' leftover silk parachutes. And as the war escalates, the events of one fateful evening will upend Clio's future forever.
A moving novel of the search for identity, the challenges of love, and the shared history that defines a family, The Clover House is a powerful debut from a distinctive and talented new writer.
"Well-paced and filled with likable, plausibly flawed characters." - Kirkus
"This debut novel offers an interesting premise and vibrant setting, but poor editing allows it to be weighed down by unnecessary plot points and shifting narrators." - Library Journal
"Family drama and cultural conflict are the twin engines that drive this atmospheric novel, in which a daughter returns to Greece to uncover her mother's secrets, and ends up discovering as much about herself as she learns about her inscrutable relatives." - Eleni Gage, author of Other Waters
"A rare treat: an elegantly written debut about a family mystery set during wartime, the slipperiness of memory, and the challenges of forgiveness." - Jenna Blum, author of Those Who Save Us
"Layered and complex, The Clover House is a provocative examination of family secrets and the things we inherit. Henriette Lazaridis Power immerses the reader in a world of tradition and resilience, creating characters who linger long beyond their final pages." - Brunonia Barry, author of The Lace Reader
"Sharply observed and evocative, The Clover House is a riveting story about desire, the cost of silence, and the power of a hidden secret from the past to change everything about the present. " - Dawn Tripp, author of Game of Secrets
"The Clover House is a tremendously readable story of how family secrets reverberate, how war can force impossible choices, and how a very modern woman faces old longings for her mother's love and a true home. This is a smart and lovely novel." - Holly Lecraw, author of The Swimming Pool
This information about The Clover House was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Henriette Lazaridis Power is a first-generation Greek-American who has degrees in English literature from Middlebury College; Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar; and the University of Pennsylvania. She taught at Harvard for ten years, serving as an academic dean for four of those. She is the founding editor of The Drum, a literary magazine publishing exclusively in audio form. A competitive rower, Power trains regularly on the Charles River in Boston.
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