I finished the last section of Deborah Lawrenson's The Lantern earlier in the week. As predicted those last pages flew by as the stories were tied together. In case you've not read the book but are planning on doing so, you might want to skip reading this post as there are spoilers. Thanks to Carl for organizing the readalong and to Heather for coming up with this week's questions. For more thoughts on the book click here.
1. Now that it's all said and done; what did you think of the book? Did you see the ending coming?
Oh well, no conflagration at the very end à la du Maurier's Manderley as I was hoping (just kidding), but I guess Les Genévriers was nice enough to save. The wrap up was much tamer than I was expecting. The loose ends were (more or less) nicely tied up, though there are still some unanswered questions. Just what happened to Pierre? Did he have a hand in the deaths of Marthe and Annette or was it simply a freak accident? Who buried the women--if the bones discovered there were indeed the two? And why did Eve use a false name with Dom? What was she hiding? Did I miss some crucial scene about Eve and her past?
I guess I must read too many thrillers and suspense novels and have come to expect "big" endings with some unexpected twist. I didn't expect Bénédicte to lose her eyesight, however, though that certainly accounts for the ghostly images she saw. That said, a book doesn't have to give all the answers and sometimes it's more effective to leave things up to the reader's imagination.
I enjoyed The Lantern, though it was maybe a little uneven at times. That could have more to do about the way I read the book and was thinking about it than the fault of the story. I really liked the writing and loved the descriptions that were so lush and vivid. And it was nicely atmospheric--a perfect fall read.
3. Pierre was such a conflicted character. In the end, do you think he killed Marthe and Annette, or did the fall to their deaths because of their blindness?
Pierre was for me just a baddie. I didn't see anything redeeming in his character. If he didn't kill Marthe and Annette I think he certainly had it in him to do so. Had they fell into the construction (and couldn't Annette see a little?) and died by accident I think he would simply have left them there--no need to bury any bodies. It suited his interests to kill them and I think he did just that.
4. The book is being compared to Rebecca and Daphne du Maurier's writing. Do you think the book lives up to that description?
I think Deborah Lawrenson had her own writing style apart from how Daphne du Maurier told her story, though I certainly think there was a heavy nod in the direction of du Maurier's Rebecca. I think she used Rebecca as a framework for her own story but filled it all out in a different way. There were lots of similar elements so it's easy to see why the comparison has been made!
5. Did you have any problems with the book? Narration? Plot? The back and forth between two different characters and times?
I did have a little trouble initially keeping track of the switches in narration. Once I had a feeling for the two stories it was easier to separate just who was talking. Other than that I thought the story was well done. Some of the characters felt a little flat but that may have been intentional.
6. Do you think Lawrenson tied both stories together well in the end? Is there anything she could/should have done differently?
It was clever how she tied things together. The missing girls ended up simply being red herrings I guess. Something to throw the reader off track and suspect Dom as being up to no good. The story was a little dark in the telling but in the resolution not so much. More of an all's well ends well ending.
7. One problem I had with the novel is the reliability of the narrators. Do you think any of them were telling the truth? Which ones?
I sort of like unreliable narrators--it makes things interesting and then you end up doing a lot of second guessing. I trusted Eve until the end when she revealed Eve was not her real name and that threw the story into question again. I think Bénédicte was telling her story truthfully, but can't be sure now about Eve. I'm not one to need happy endings generally, but I was glad this story had happy endings in both stories.