another margot livesey book, and probably my last for a while. not too different from the previous, although the characters were slightly more interesting. 4 characters are intertwined and each refers to a different literary character. charles dodgson, emily bronte, keats, and dickens. again, poor communication was a major problem leading to tragedy. ( )

Content notes: Suicide. Infidelity. One of the four sections is from the point of view of a pedophile, though there is no sexual content involving a child.

This book is preoccupied with the question: When is love wrong?

Interesting. Well-written. Very sad. ( )

This was fantastic. I've been a Livesey fan since I read Eva Moves the Furniture but slightly disappointed with everything since. Not this one.

The novel is made up of four interlocking chapters that all concern - in one way or another - the death of one of characters. Each chapter is told by or is about different character and each is influenced by a book or author - Dickens, Keats, Jane Eyre, and Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll). The chapters comment and inform on one another in a way that is fairly dazzling. And yet, at the end, everything isn't tied up neatly. You understand more than you did at the outset but there are still gaps. ( )

I found this to be a fundamentally good book. It tackles important issues with a realistic approach from 4 of the participants' viewpoints. It is a story about relationships (families, friends, and lovers), what can go wrong, and what impact those wrongs can have - directly and indirectly. The only problem I had with this book is that the stories of the four different people tended to involve too much repetition for me. Of course the different people would tell much of the story of their interactions in the same way, so I'm not sure how else it could be written (I'm not a writer!). As a father trying to work through his relationships with his children & partner, I found Livesey's observations, made through her characters, to be often very insightful and sometimes disturbing (especially the situation of a daughter with her dying father). ( )

It seems like a stroke of mutual good luck for Abigail Taylor and Dara MacLeod when they meet while studying at St. Andrews University in Edinburgh, Scotland. Despite their differences, the two young women form a firm and fast friendship and a lasting, unshakable bond. Even years later, they remain such an unlikely pair.

Abigail - an actress who confidently uses her talent both on and offstage - charms everyone she meets, but believes herself immune to love. Dara - a counselor at a crisis center - is convinced that everyone is somehow irrevocably marked by their childhood; she throws herself into romantic relationships with frightening intensity.

Yet now it appears that each woman has finally found "true love". Is this another stroke of luck? Proof that each relationship is a once-in-a-lifetime love? Abigail has apparently found love with her academic boyfriend, Sean, and Dara with a tall, dark violinist named Edward; who quite literally falls at her feet. However, soon after Dara moves into Abigail's downstairs apartment, trouble threatens both relationships, as well as their friendship.

For Abigail, the trouble comes in the form of an anonymous letter, addressed to Sean and accusing Abigail of being unfaithful; for Dara, a reconciliation with her estranged father Cameron - who left the family when Dara was ten - reawakens some very complicated feelings. Through four ingeniously interlocking narratives - Sean's, Cameron's, Dara's, and Abigail's - we gradually come to understand how these characters' lives were shaped by both chance and determination. Whatever the source, there is absolutely no mistaking the veil that falls when tragedy strikes the house on Fortune Street.

I absolutely loved this book. In my opinion, it was a poignant and thought-provoking story - very intelligently and thoughtfully written. For me, this was also a compulsively readable story - one that I just could not put down. It was an interesting and engaging plot, and I needed to know what would happen next. I give The House on Fortune Street: A Novel by Margot Livesey an A+! and must say, that while this is the first book by this author that I've read, it most certainly won't be my last. ( )