The Wish House
by Celia Rees
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Book Summary Information
Author: Celia ReesEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-08-22
ISBN: 0763629510
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Candlewick
Book Reviews of The Wish House
Book Review: A bold and realistic book written for more mature teen readers
Summary: 5 Stars
Richard's family has been bringing their camper to the Welsh countryside almost every summer that he can remember. There he can meet up with his good friend Dylan, roam the wilderness, and generally run around unsupervised while his father goes fishing and his mother reads mystery novels.
But this summer, the year Richard is 15, is destined to be something entirely different. This year, when Richard goes exploring at the ruined manor house he and Dylan have dubbed "The Wish House," it's no longer abandoned. Instead, the Wish House has been occupied by a most unconventional family, the Daltons. From the start, when Richard encounters Lucia Dalton sunbathing nude in the house's garden, he realizes that this family is entirely unlike his own. Fascinated by Lucia and her brilliant artist husband Jethro, and utterly bewitched by their daughter Clio, Richard begins spending more and more time with this artistic family and their eccentric friends and relations.
The year is 1976, and free love, readily available marijuana and nudity are the norm among the Daltons' circle of friends. Richard, whose conventional family background is utterly unlike the bohemian Daltons, is at times intrigued by this alternative lifestyle and at other times repulsed by it. But thanks to his rapidly developing sexual relationship with Clio, Richard is willing to take the plunge, to accept the Daltons and become part of their world --- at least until he uncovers a secret that threatens to ruin everything.
A realistic novel about a young man's sexual coming of age, filled with betrayals, secrets and lies, might seem quite a departure for Celia Rees, best known for her historical novels PIRATES! and WITCH CHILD. However, Rees's many fans will find parallels in THE WISH HOUSE, with its air of mysticism, powerful symbolic imagery and reliance on the natural world (waves, forests, gardens full of black flowers) for its dense themes.
THE WISH HOUSE is definitely a novel for sophisticated readers; with frank talk about drugs and sexuality, not to mention hints of incest, it is clearly aimed at a mature teen audience. The adult themes of the book, in fact, will probably lead readers to suspect a more insidious secret than the one that actually lurks in the Wish House, resulting in somewhat of a letdown at the novel's end. That being said, though, Rees's bold new book, told in a series of flashbacks, does offer an intriguing glimpse into a particular time in recent history as seen through the eyes of one young man destined to be changed forever by what he sees.
--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl
Summary of The Wish House
From the best-selling author of WITCH CHILD and SORCERESS comes another engrossing, atmospheric novel ? following a teenage boy as he uncovers the secrets of the mysterious and provocative Wish House.It's the start of summer vacation, and fifteen-year-old Richard has discovered that a family has taken up residence in the usually deserted Wish House. Richard is intrigued by both the house and the bohemian family now living there. The father, Jethro Dalton, is an internationally renowned painter; his seemingly licentious wife is fascinated by herbs and cures. But it's their beautiful and vibrant daughter, Clio, the muse for Jethro?s paintings, who draws Richard utterly into the Daltons' world. Soon Richard finds himself so captivated by Clio that he steals off to the woods to spend days and nights with her, meanwhile struggling to understand and fit in with her eccentric clan. How could he know that some mysteries are best left alone ? and that some betrayals can never be forgiven?
The last thing fifteen-year-old Richard expects when he goes exploring near his parents' annual vacation spot is to find his familiar summer haunt, the abandoned cottage he calls the Wish House, suddenly occupied. An eccentric painter named Jay Dalton and his family have bought the place and turned it into a magnet for artists and writers that conventional Richard at first finds loud and strange. But the more time he spends with Jay, his fortune-telling wife Lucia, and their bewitching daughter Clio, the more Richard finds himself relaxing into their insouciant lifestyle.
Jay insists on that Richard sit for him, Lucia confides in him like a peer, while Clio becomes his first lover. Then Richard stumbles onto a shocking family secret that indicates his trust in the free-spirited family has been misplaced. Hurt and betrayed, Richard commits an irrevocable act of destruction that abruptly ends the alluring spell of the Wish House. Not until he attends Clio?s first gallery opening years later is he able to achieve closure on the events of that memorable and painful fifteenth summer.
Celia Rees has written an age appropriate "seduction of the innocent" story, a Henry James novel for the YA set. This wonderfully sensual young adult novel is permeated with evocative images of nature and mythology, while remaining restrained in its descriptions of teen sex and implied incest. Older teen fans of Looking for Alaska and How I Live Now will appreciate Rees' dark view into the baffling world of adult motivations. ?Jennifer Hubert
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