Book Review: The Hundred Year House

The Hundred Year House 

This is the book you hope every book will be when you open it; it has humour, intelligence and depth, is beautifully written, and houses a story that’s hard not to devour in one sitting.

Set in a house, Laurelfield, in Chicago, it begins in 1999, skips to 1955 and ends in 1929, telling the intertwined stories of the generations of family who’ve lived there, and ultimately revealing a wonderful, slick twist.

In 1999, Zee and husband Douglas move into the Coach House, after it’s offered to them by her mother.

Doug is fascinated by the Laurelfield of 1929, then an artists’ colony, but Zee’s mother denies access to the attic, where the colony’s files that may contain information on the poet he’s writing a book about, are kept. So – inevitably — Doug finds his own way up there.

But what he finds is far more curious than he could have imagined ...