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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Feb 2016, 384 pages
Paperback:
Jul 2017, 400 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Norah Piehl
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For fans of Kate Morton and Sarah Waters, here's a magnetic debut novel of wrenching family secrets, forbidden love, and heartbreaking loss housed within the grand gothic manor of Black Rabbit Hall.
Ghosts are everywhere, not just the ghost of Momma in the woods, but ghosts of us too, what we used to be like in those long summers ...
Amber Alton knows that the hours pass differently at Black Rabbit Hall, her London family's country estate, where no two clocks read the same. Summers there are perfect, timeless. Not much ever happens. Until, of course, it does.
More than three decades later, Lorna is determined to be married within the grand, ivy-covered walls of Pencraw Hall, known as Black Rabbit Hall among the locals. But as she's drawn deeper into the overgrown grounds, half-buried memories of her mother begin to surface and Lorna soon finds herself ensnared within the manor's labyrinthine history, overcome with an insatiable need for answers about her own past and that of the once-happy family whose memory still haunts the estate.
Stunning and atmospheric, this debut novel is a thrilling spiral into the hearts of two women separated by decades but inescapably linked by the dark and tangled secrets of Black Rabbit Hall.
AMBER
Last day of the summer holidays, 1969, Cornwall
I feel safe on the cliff ledge, safer than in the house, anyway. Afew feet from the coast path, it's a twenty-minute scramble from the edge of the estate, far enough from Black Rabbit Hall's watching win dows, a secret place. I hover on the cliff above it for a moment or two, wind snapping my dress against my legs, soles of my feet tingling, then lower myself carefully, gripping the clumps of grass, sea roaring in my ears. (Best not to look down.) One small heart-stop drop and I'm perching right on the edge of sky. Jump too wide, it's all over. I wouldn't do it. But it occurs to me that I like the fact I could. That I have some control over my destiny today.
Pressed against the cliff wall, I finally catch my breath. So much frantic searching: woods, ...
Black Rabbit Hall is drawing a number of comparisons with the beloved novels of Daphne Du Maurier, not least because of their shared setting in Cornwall, but also because of a more generalized exploration of the links between a specific, evocative place and (often devastating) family history. Chase's novel rarely shifts setting from the confines of Black Rabbit Hall and its environs; when it does, the change is both jarring and a bit liberating, as if the reader can finally take a deep breath, away from the stifling and yet spellbinding atmosphere of this place...continued
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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).
Alex Marwood, Edgar Award-winning author of The Wicked Girls
A deliciously intriguing novel whose rich sense of time and place bear more than a few echoes of du Maurier's best." Carla Buckley, author of The Things That Keep Us Here
Black Rabbit Hall by Eve Chase is the spellbinding, lusciously-written story of two families twined together across the span of time, trapped in limbo in a magical, sea-swept Cornwall house with secrets as deep as its Normandy roots. Deborah Lawrenson, author of The Lantern and The Sea Garden
Eve Chase's deliciously intriguing descriptions will pull you in alongside her heroine Lorna in the red car that moves like a drop of blood down the drive to the house of secrets and dusty enchantments, as the outside world fades away. Hester Young, author of The Gates of Evangeline
With rich and darkly evocative prose, Eve Chase's Black Rabbit Hall is a mesmerizing Gothic tale of tragedy and romance that will leave you feeling wind-swept and exhilarated. Lisa Jewell, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Girls
Black Rabbit Hall completely swept me away, a glorious, beautifully written fairy tale for grownups. I absolutely loved it. Margaret Leroy, author of The Soldier's Wife
Black Rabbit Hall is an enthralling and deeply moving novel about family secrets, loss, and love. I was charmed by the beautifully-evoked Cornish setting, and the engaging children who are brought so vividly to life. Eve Chase is a wonderfully gifted storyteller. Michelle Gable, bestselling author of A Paris Apartment
Featuring a haunting, captivating storyline, an unforgettable Cornwall estate, and a cast of beguiling characters, Eve Chase has created a stunning page turner. Rowan Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of The Accidental Mother and The Day We Met
Expertly crafted, dark, beautiful and utterly enthralling. Wendy Webb, bestselling author of The Tale of Halcyon Crane
A deliciously addicting gothic in which dark secrets of the past scratch at the door of the present in a big, old, crumbing house on the wild Cornish coast. It's got it all, a lady of the house as crumbling as the bricks themselves, a mysterious maid, love, tragedy, evil and a strong heroine trying to make sense of it all.
The grounds of Black Rabbit Hall (In Eve Chase's eponymously named novel) are depicted as lush and untamed, a state of wildness that could be the site of enchantment or of danger. Several times Chase mentions "giant rhubarb" growing wild in the woods around Black Rabbit Hall, a detail that immediately reminded me of a real Cornish garden that seems to share a number of qualities with the abundant foliage encircling Black Rabbit Hall – Heligan.
Heligan was once the home of the Tremayne family, near the Cornish town of Mevagissey. It was a beautiful home surrounded by elaborate, well-tended gardens developed over hundreds of years. But the outbreak of World War I, among other factors, meant that the garden quickly slid into neglect, ...
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