09-18-2010, 05:07 AM
I just finished with the book and I think there's a lot in it that can be discussed in this book club thread. If people are still interested? I hope Bronte isn't offended that I sort-off hijacked her idea. Please forgive me for being impatient and presumptious. I hope other forumites will start new book club threads as well. The more the better!
Anyway, back to Arcadia Falls. I'll assume no spoiler tags are necessary in book club threads?
I found the book an interesting read and I was intrigued to see how things would end. This was my second Carol Goodman book and I noticed a lot of similarities: teacher with child as heroine, boarding school, ominous setting is nature, several stories with each their own mystery layered together.
As in "The lake of dead languages" the heroine didn't get sympathetic at all. She was a bit of a know-it-all. Though she acted loving towards her daughter, this teenager was resentful and sometimes even hateful, for which the readers are given no real reason. At the end of the book the daughter suddenly admits she loves mom and all's well that ends well.
The ominous setting is the woods surrounding the boarding school. Meg gets to live in an old cottage some 15 minutes' walk from the school so there's a lot of time to be impressed by the beauty, eeriness, changes etc. in the forest.
One of the story layers is a fairytale situated in exactly these woods and you get to imagine how the cottage was a witch's house, girls turn into trees and vice versa, and a tree root looks like a baby (Pan's Labyrinth might have been an inspiration there).
So the build-up of the story was quite all right, it's just that towards the end of the book it became a little jumbled together and some things really didn't make much sense anymore. In my opinion, of course. I've still got a lot of questions, but perhaps you saw the answers and I missed them.
For instance: Lily's diary. This had been hidden in the hearth of the cottage. Not even Vera, who lived there, had found it. It could be that she didn't know Lily had written this diary. Lily had told Vera where to look for it in a letter but Ivy kept the letter from Vera, so supposedly only Ivy knew of the diary. Then Ivy went to Dora and Ada to ask if they had the diary, so they also knew about it. But apparently also Fleur had read the diary. Where did she get it from? And why did she put it back in the secret hiding place in the hearth? A few days before Meg arrives at the cottage Chloe and Isabel are sent over to clean it and apparently Isabel found the diary. She had time to read it and write a paper using the information in that little space of time, whereas Meg took weeks to read it. I know, this was to keep up the suspense for us readers, but it wasn't logical. And Isabel even returned the diary to its hiding place. And why wanted Ivy to find the diary so badly? She couldn't have known what it was about. It's just a red herring to have the readers think she may have killed Isabel over this diary.
Which brings me to my second question. I don't know why Isabel was killed. I have been reading the book late at night a few times, so perhaps I missed something. But what was Shelley's motive? And at the final scene on the ridge it seems that Shelley is threatening Sally, but why? It would have made more sense if she had been threatening Chloe, who knew what was in Isabel's paper. I'm confused.
I'm also confused about the mixing up of the babies at the convent. What was the use of that? So let me try to get it straight. Lily had her baby and left. Mimi was still around and saw to it that the baby would be adopted by Gertrude. But she regretted that at the last moment, had Gertrude receive another child with a forged birth certificate and took Lily's baby for herself. Gertrude returned the baby when she got a child of her own. This baby is Ivy. Lily's baby became Meg's grandmother. This coincidence reminded me of the Da Vinci Code: "Sophie, that makes you Christ's last descendant on earth". Haha. But the biggest coincidence is Ivy's artistic talent. The reader thinks it's because Ivy is Lily and Nash's child, which gives her the artistic genes from both parents, but she isn't!
Things like this make me dislike the book. I don't know if I'll want to read another Carol Goodman novel. Both books I read were illogical and contrived and the people were unsympathetic. Sorry.
.....
I went back in the book to see if I could find a reason why Shelley would want to kill Isabel.
This really doesn't make any sense to me. And Carol Goodman calls it "relentless logic"? Huh?
If this is what's happened then Isabel hadn't found the diary herself, but it was given her by Shelley. But who put it back into the hearth and why?
And I've just thought of another odd thing: Why did Lily write a letter to Vera telling her of the diary? That would have made sense if she indeed had planned to run off with Nash, but that wasn't the case. She only went to the barn in the valley to pick up the statue and say goodbye to Nash. Who would write a letter when they could see the recipient face to face all day long? That letter was solely meant for us, the readers, to put us on the wrong foot.
Anyway, back to Arcadia Falls. I'll assume no spoiler tags are necessary in book club threads?
I found the book an interesting read and I was intrigued to see how things would end. This was my second Carol Goodman book and I noticed a lot of similarities: teacher with child as heroine, boarding school, ominous setting is nature, several stories with each their own mystery layered together.
As in "The lake of dead languages" the heroine didn't get sympathetic at all. She was a bit of a know-it-all. Though she acted loving towards her daughter, this teenager was resentful and sometimes even hateful, for which the readers are given no real reason. At the end of the book the daughter suddenly admits she loves mom and all's well that ends well.
The ominous setting is the woods surrounding the boarding school. Meg gets to live in an old cottage some 15 minutes' walk from the school so there's a lot of time to be impressed by the beauty, eeriness, changes etc. in the forest.
One of the story layers is a fairytale situated in exactly these woods and you get to imagine how the cottage was a witch's house, girls turn into trees and vice versa, and a tree root looks like a baby (Pan's Labyrinth might have been an inspiration there).
So the build-up of the story was quite all right, it's just that towards the end of the book it became a little jumbled together and some things really didn't make much sense anymore. In my opinion, of course. I've still got a lot of questions, but perhaps you saw the answers and I missed them.
For instance: Lily's diary. This had been hidden in the hearth of the cottage. Not even Vera, who lived there, had found it. It could be that she didn't know Lily had written this diary. Lily had told Vera where to look for it in a letter but Ivy kept the letter from Vera, so supposedly only Ivy knew of the diary. Then Ivy went to Dora and Ada to ask if they had the diary, so they also knew about it. But apparently also Fleur had read the diary. Where did she get it from? And why did she put it back in the secret hiding place in the hearth? A few days before Meg arrives at the cottage Chloe and Isabel are sent over to clean it and apparently Isabel found the diary. She had time to read it and write a paper using the information in that little space of time, whereas Meg took weeks to read it. I know, this was to keep up the suspense for us readers, but it wasn't logical. And Isabel even returned the diary to its hiding place. And why wanted Ivy to find the diary so badly? She couldn't have known what it was about. It's just a red herring to have the readers think she may have killed Isabel over this diary.
Which brings me to my second question. I don't know why Isabel was killed. I have been reading the book late at night a few times, so perhaps I missed something. But what was Shelley's motive? And at the final scene on the ridge it seems that Shelley is threatening Sally, but why? It would have made more sense if she had been threatening Chloe, who knew what was in Isabel's paper. I'm confused.
I'm also confused about the mixing up of the babies at the convent. What was the use of that? So let me try to get it straight. Lily had her baby and left. Mimi was still around and saw to it that the baby would be adopted by Gertrude. But she regretted that at the last moment, had Gertrude receive another child with a forged birth certificate and took Lily's baby for herself. Gertrude returned the baby when she got a child of her own. This baby is Ivy. Lily's baby became Meg's grandmother. This coincidence reminded me of the Da Vinci Code: "Sophie, that makes you Christ's last descendant on earth". Haha. But the biggest coincidence is Ivy's artistic talent. The reader thinks it's because Ivy is Lily and Nash's child, which gives her the artistic genes from both parents, but she isn't!
Things like this make me dislike the book. I don't know if I'll want to read another Carol Goodman novel. Both books I read were illogical and contrived and the people were unsympathetic. Sorry.
.....
I went back in the book to see if I could find a reason why Shelley would want to kill Isabel.
Quote:I try to calm down by telling myself that I have no proof that Shelley was behind Isabel’s death, but the pieces keep falling into place with a relentless logic. Fleur Sheldon was the last one to have Lily’s journal. Shelley must have found it with her mother’s things, along with the letter that described the discovery of Lily’s body. Shelley realized that Ivy St. Clare was responsible for Lily’s death—for her grandmother’s death. She would have blamed Ivy for her mother’s crumbling mental health. Why, though, didn’t she accuse Ivy herself? Maybe she was afraid that it would look like she had been trying to get Ivy fired from Arcadia so that she could take over her position, which is what she ended up doing. So she’d found someone else to make the connections and accuse Ivy: Isabel Cheney, a bright, ambitious history student who’d be sure to learn from the journal and letter that Ivy St. Clare was Lily’s daughter and figure out that Ivy had killed Lily. But Isabel had also been smart enough to figure out what Shelley was trying to do and to confront her. Only someone truly unhinged would respond by following Isabel into the woods and pushing her from the ridge, but I am beginning to suspect that Shelley is just that. Shelley must have been the woman in white I glimpsed near the cottage and whom Chloe had seen in the woods.
As I told Shelley yesterday.
Shelley now knew that Chloe had seen her. Would she wait for Chloe to figure out that it had been Shelley or would she arrange another accident on the ridge?
This really doesn't make any sense to me. And Carol Goodman calls it "relentless logic"? Huh?
If this is what's happened then Isabel hadn't found the diary herself, but it was given her by Shelley. But who put it back into the hearth and why?
And I've just thought of another odd thing: Why did Lily write a letter to Vera telling her of the diary? That would have made sense if she indeed had planned to run off with Nash, but that wasn't the case. She only went to the barn in the valley to pick up the statue and say goodbye to Nash. Who would write a letter when they could see the recipient face to face all day long? That letter was solely meant for us, the readers, to put us on the wrong foot.
