The World Before Us
A Mystery, Contemporary, Historical book. This is why we have to stay awake, be vigilant: we need to believe that we, like the museum objects...
Deep in the woods of northern England, somewhere between a dilapidated estate and an abandoned Victorian asylum, fifteen-year-old Jane Standen lived through a nightmare. She was babysitting a sweet young girl named Lily, and in one fleeting moment, lost her. The little girl was never found, leaving her family and Jane devastated. Twenty years later, Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As a final research project--an endeavor inspired in part by her painful past--Jane surveys the archives for information related to another missing person: a woman who disappeared more than one hundred years ago in the same woods where Lily was lost. As Jane pieces moments in history together, a portrait of a fascinating group of people starts to unfurl. Inexplicably tied to the mysterious disappearance of long ago, Jane finds tender details of their lives at the country estate and in the asylum that are linked to her own heartbroken world, and their story from all those years ago may now help Jane find a way to move on.
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- Filetype: PDF
- Pages: 419 pages
- ISBN: 9780241146873 / 0
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More About The World Before Us
She kisses him because he is a good kisser, because he is sweet, because for the last hour she has only been here; and because he is a gentleman who wants to bring her another blanket that will smell of dust and old straw, who paid for their drinks with the only ten-pound note left in a wallet that had a strip of Velcro on it. Aislinn Hunter, The World Before Us: A Novel // This is the wonder of names. Like the press of a footprint in the snow: proof that someone has been there. Aislinn Hunter, The World Before Us // This is why we have to stay awake, be vigilant: we need to believe that we, like the museum objects around us, bear time with equal complexity, that eventually we might discover who we have been, what purpose we serve and what use we might one day be. Aislinn Hunter, The World Before Us: A Novel //
Thanks to Hogarth, Crown Publishing, and Goodreads for the review copy. Some books are best to read blindly, and this is one, so I will not give any plot points away. I'll say this, Hunter's language is poetic, her writing is precise, and this story is excellent. I've read the comparisons to A.S. Byatt in other reviews and on the jacket... Things I Find While ShelvingI received a free ARC via NetGalleyThis is a very quiet book. Quiet andstrange.Jane Standen has, unbeknown to her, collected ghosts. Through dissertation research she uncovered a bit of a mystery at an old convalescent home - a woman who disappeared, referred to only by her first initial. As she goes on with... Can you work in archives and museums and not be haunted by the past? Maybe it depends on what your own past conceals. Sometimes, when I am doing family history research, I feel like I have a cloud of ghostly companionshipperhaps even guiding me, getting me to notice certain things, pushing little thoughts into my head. Very much like...
