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By the bestselling author of The Drowning People
Joan McAllistair is about to embark on the ‘Trip of a Lifetime’ with her daughter Eloise; a journey back to her childhood South Africa and the family homestead in the old Boer Republic of the Orange Free State. For Eloise, a successful hedge fund manager, the trip is partly a gift, partly a means of assuaging the guilt she feels at moving her mother from her own flat to an expensive care home.
Joan has not visited the country since she was twenty-two but the chance discovery of her grandmother’s journal transports her to the troubled times of the Anglo-Boer war. Eloise, in the meantime, has gambled her company’s entire fortune on a promise made by an old lover – a scientist whose life’s work has been stalled by a broken heart.
As their stories unravel and Joan is faced with the prospect of being surrounded by strangers who do not understand her, she takes increasing refuge in the landscape of her mind – in journeys to her own past. She also finds an unexpected friend in a lonely teenager who shares her fascination with history, in particular the haunting story of a young girl and boy who once lived in the home.
Moving between nineteenth-century England and South Africa, war-time Paris and London, The Lighted Rooms is a stunningly incisive and poignant novel about family, duty and the challenging world of the mind.
Joan McAllistair is about to embark on the ‘Trip of a Lifetime’ with her daughter Eloise; a journey back to her childhood South Africa and the family homestead in the old Boer Republic of the Orange Free State. For Eloise, a successful hedge fund manager, the trip is partly a gift, partly a means of assuaging the guilt she feels at moving her mother from her own flat to an expensive care home.
Joan has not visited the country since she was twenty-two but the chance discovery of her grandmother’s journal transports her to the troubled times of the Anglo-Boer war. Eloise, in the meantime, has gambled her company’s entire fortune on a promise made by an old lover – a scientist whose life’s work has been stalled by a broken heart.
As their stories unravel and Joan is faced with the prospect of being surrounded by strangers who do not understand her, she takes increasing refuge in the landscape of her mind – in journeys to her own past. She also finds an unexpected friend in a lonely teenager who shares her fascination with history, in particular the haunting story of a young girl and boy who once lived in the home.
Moving between nineteenth-century England and South Africa, war-time Paris and London, The Lighted Rooms is a stunningly incisive and poignant novel about family, duty and the challenging world of the mind.
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Reviews
an engaging story
A beautifully crafted novel with two superbly drawn women at its heart
A mesmerising novel... Peopled with believeable characters it is a beautifully crafted exploration of love, duty and friendship.
Mason's eloquent depiction of mental collapse and the grief it causes.
¿Stand by for a sweeping historical drama, mixing the political with the personal, as one family looks back at a very troubled past¿
a brilliant portrait of old age
'the subtle style that marked his debut, with hints and suggestions nestling amongst the leisurely prose, is still evident in The Lighted Rooms¿a rewarding read'.
this shocking, compassionate and exquisitely written novel
the book is a thoughtful and at times hilarious challenge to assumptions about ageing, family and history, and draws and angry parallel between US action in Iraq and British action in the Transvaal.
¿Richard Mason weaves an engrossing tale of memory, ambition and shifting familial duties.¿
Mason can draw wonderful characters without toe-curling cliches. Patrick Derby, Eloise's biro-munching boss, is wonderful.
Mason's novel is touching, funny and highly original.
This is an involving book that explores family legacies, ties and love with real perception.
a moving and uplifting novel by a writer at the height of his powers