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301 reviews for:

A Sudden Light

Garth Stein

3.54 AVERAGE

jennreadsallthetime's review

5.0

Sometimes the Book Gods & Goddesses deliver a piece of work that is exactly what you need to read when your life requires it. Though I purchased "A Sudden Light" the day it came out, I didn't start it until this week.
There are authors who try to force depth onto you and it gets torqued and tortured and messages can get lost. But with Mr. Stein, there is a depth in his writing that is so multi-layered that the reader is able to just enjoy the story or to go as far emotionally as needed.
"A Sudden Light" is not only a ghost story. It's a story about dreams. And expectations. Family. Family convolutions. Integrity. Love. Honor. Regret. Guilt. History. Nature.
I have no doubt that I will read this numerous times and, like "The Art of Racing in the Rain," will find new levels of meaning with each read.
Thank you Mr. Stein for another beautiful book.

6h 24m
suvata's profile picture

suvata's review

4.0


The year is 1990 and 14-year-old Trevor is at Riddell House with his father (Jones) visiting his ailing grandfather. This house was once a great family estate built with their timber company fortune. It is now in ill-repair and the family is no longer wealthy. Living in the house are Trevor's Aunt Serena and Grandpa Samuel who is suffering from dementia. It is Jones and Serena's plan to sell the property to developers to divide into "tract housing for millionaires" and split what should be a huge profit. The problem is, Grandpa Samuel has every intention of keeping the promise made by the family patriarch, Elijah, to let the property revert back to wilderness and unblemished land.

While wandering through the old house, Trevor unearths the family's secrets as well as a ghost (Ben) who will not rest until Elijah’s wish is fulfilled.

I was completely captivated by this book.
adventurous emotional mysterious reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Deliciously creepy, without being scary. Excellent audiobook narration.
rollerskater's profile picture

rollerskater's review


Read only 3 chapters. I got tired of the narrator, and Serena -- even the arches of her feet are beautiful??

bairdthereader's review

4.0

Probably more like 3.5 stars. This story had a lot of potential, and achieved some of it with a fantastic setting and interesting historical premise, along with a sympathetic narrator. It certainly goes to some interesting places that will make you think. But it was occasionally weighed down by Serena, a domineering and strange character who made the whole story tip toward the unbelievable, and the fact that I could see some of the ending coming from miles away (though, to be fair, there are one or two good twists).

terri_wood8's review

3.0

This one took me forever to finish. I really liked the narrator, but the story kind of dragged. It sounded interesting with a mystery, ghosts, etc, but the only character I really liked was the main one-Trevor, a 14 year old boy.

In a nutshell: Trevor embarks on a quest to save his parents’ marriage when he travels with his father to his childhood home and uncovers many family secrets.

Recommendation: This is difficult. This book is rather interesting, but I would argue it isn’t for everyone.

This book is very interesting, and normally I wouldn’t care for a book like this, as it jumps in time quite a bit with old diary entries. But, the characters are colourful and what we have here is a case where an inanimate object, a house, is a character as well.

“Perhaps that’s what life is about—the search for such a connection. The search for magic. The search for the inexplicable. Not in order to explain it, or contain it. Simply in order to feel it. Because in that recognition of the sublime, we see for a moment the entire universe in the palm of our hand. And in that moment, we touch the face of God.”


Trevor is going with his father to the home his father grew up in as Trevor’s parents are on the brink of divorcing. Trevor only has one objective: get mom and dad back together. But as he becomes entranced with the colossal wooden mammoth that is the house of his family, the quest changes. The house is planned to be demolished with new developments built. But Trevor learns from old diary entries, letters, and spirits that dwell in the house that the original builders of the house want the house to be destroyed and returned to the woods from where it came. All the while, Trevor becomes better acquainted with his estranged Aunt Serena and his grandfather with Alzheimers, who insists he can hear his late wife dancing in the ballroom.

So the book is written from the mind of a 14 year old boy... so the writing style isn’t very elegant, but the book is still descriptive in its own way. It allows you to imagine what the house must look like both outside and in, and I consider visualization to be very important when one reads any book.

This book gets four stars from me because while I COULD put it down, I didn’t want to. I wanted to uncover the secrets of the family like Trevor.

I couldn’t even find much wrong with this book to be honest. There were multiple climaxes and they were actually GOOD. I found myself saying “NO!!!” numerous times.

But one thing really did weird me out, and it will not be ignored in this review. Trevor has an unhealthy obsession with his aunt... mostly her toes. I can count at least 5 times where Trevor refers to his aunt’s toes as beautiful and the nails painted blue. It’s actually kind of creepy. I mean... foot fetishes are one thing, but being obsessed with your AUNT’S feet? That’s just a tad much.

Other than that, I thought this book was pretty solid and I was definitely impressed.

hannahlivre's review

3.0

A Sudden Light, by Garth Stein, is a book that I find difficult to rate or categorize, because it was both more, and less, than I expected. On the one hand, it was an enjoyable and easy read, one which included many tantalizing elements.

For example, A Sudden Light includes:
1. a haunted house
2. ghosts
3. a mystery
4. dual-time narratives
5. hidden staircases
6. hidden journals
7. secrets, secrets, and more secrets

On top of this, the setting, an area of beautiful, untamed woods just outside of Seattle, Washington, and the historical fiction element relating to John Muir and a love of nature, were a fascinating touch.

However, part of what didn't work for me was that the author tried to fit SO MUCH into the story that I had a hard time figuring out what it was really about.
Furthermore, I've seen A Sudden Light categorized as both a young adult and an adult novel, and I can understand why this is. I felt like the story's tone, as well as the way in which issues such as homosexuality, domestic violence, and possible incest were presented, left me feeling like the book hovered in a gray area between young adult and adult fiction.
To me, A Sudden Light clearly read as a coming-of-age story, in that it is a story told by an adult narrator about his 14-year-old self. However, the narrative voice didn't quite work for me as a convincing 14-year-old point of view, or as an adult whose values and understanding I felt completely comfortable accepting.
I assume that the writer meant for the novel to be positive in tone towards some of the main characters, who were dealing with homophobia. However, some of the statements made by the narrator came across as possibly judgmental to this reader.
On top of this, I felt uncomfortable with the way an incident of domestic violence was never addressed, as well as how some incestuous attitudes were, to my mind, glossed over.
I also felt that the author (thinly disguised as the adult narrator, thinly disguised as a 14-year-old boy who claimed he was a genius) used A Sudden Light to lecture about issues such as conservation, good and evil, and Original Sin. I found the 14-year-old's metaphors about the Garden of Eden, separation, and John Muir to be somewhat muddled and unconvincing.
Finally, I felt that A Sudden Light succumbed to the pitfall of substituting generic descriptions to create a "gothic" feel, rather than using specific details to create an authentic atmosphere. Stein's writing reminded me of the generic descriptions in the lightly enjoyable stories of writers such as Simone St. James or Wendy Webb. On the other hand, writers who I admire for their ability to create authentic atmosphere include Sarah Waters, Michael Cox, and Jane Harris.
So in the end, A Sudden Light did a lot of things passably, but nothing brilliantly. I think it could have been a more powerful story if the author had clarified his focus.
I received an arc of A Sudden Light from the publishers through NetGalley.

betsysbookcase's review

2.0

This is a story of redemption, forgiveness, the struggle to make the right decision in the face of opposition, faith in that which one cannot see, and family loyalties that are unbreakable.

Trevor is a 14-year-old boy who travels from New England to Seattle with his father to meet his relatives for the first time. They stay in a historic log mansion with Trevor's grandfather and aunt, where his father grew up, and it is apparent immediately that there are deep family secrets, points of resentment, and unfinished business among them and those who lived there before them.

During their visit, Trevor discovers that the house is haunted by the ghost of his decreased great-grandfather, Ben, who appears to Trevor and guides him in learning about his family's secretive past. His great-great-grandfather was a wealthy logger who wished to develop the land for profit, while Ben was passionate about preserving the forests and becoming in tune with nature. During his life, Ben was torn between "the philosophies of the Transcendentalists and the new breed of conservationism with his father's mission, which, as far as he could tell, was to destroy nature for profit." Ben is stuck as a ghost in the mansion until his mission to return the house to nature is completed.

Trevor wants to experience the world around him with all of his senses engaged, and grows closer to his father as he realizes this desire. He searches for meaning, and for a metaphysical connection to the world and to the past, present and future... "I wanted very badly to have an affinity for something that would become transcendent when I held it in my hands."

This story asks the reader to consider the metaphysical realm and connection all beings have to one another. "Sometimes there are triggers for disease that may be rooted in the metaphysical realm, and, when something like that occurs, medical science tends to dismiss the connection because it does not exist within the pages of their medical tomes." "We are all connected. The living to the nonliving, as the nonliving to the living. All things in all directions in all times... And who's to say that energy is not real? We can't see gravity, either, yet we don't deny it."

I didn't completely buy into the metaphysical aspect and the ghosts, but I thought the points were intriquing. My most substantial critique of this book is the underdevelopment of the characters. The adults are unstable and even immature at times, with very inconsistent relationships with one another. The 14-year-old boy seemed to be the most insightful, intelligent, and mature of the group. Maybe that was the point, but I would have liked a greater sense of each character's personality and goals.

Overall this was a quick read that brought up some interesting points, but not what I had hoped from the author of The Art of Racing in the Rain, which is one of my favorite books of all time!