We're all a little mad around here

The Uninvited Guests - Sadie Jones (Harper, 2012)

2012 wrap-up coming tomorrow-ish, I hope. (If not, at least know that according to my blog count, I read 50 books this past year. Decent enough statistics.) Until then though, what better way to close out the year than a trip to the turn of the last century: Edwardian England.

This book reminded me of two things: a sitcom episode in which events spiral increasingly out of control, and one of those dreams in which you can't ever get to that thing that you desperately need to do, b/c other things keep happening. Now throw in a dash of Gothic ghoulishness.

It's Emerald's birthday. Her stepfather is away, trying to save the "family" home impractically purchased by Emerald's dead father. He - the stepfather - has only one arm, a fact of no major importance, but dwelt upon all the same. Emerald's mother is weird in that way 19th-century English literature mothers often are. Emerald's brother sulks, her younger sister runs around in a dirty nightgown, hatching schemes that only neglected youngest siblings do, and the housekeeper has only one more set of hands to put together a birthday party. And then there are guests: another set of siblings, and a wealthy farmer's son.

And then there are more. A train accident, and for some reason haggard survivors descent en masse to the house. In a series of events fairly reminiscent of Clue, the family shuts the survivors in a room and then tries to get back to the matter of the dinner party. Except increasingly creepy things start happening, and eventually all hell breaks loose.

The novel turns into something of a fever dream, until the fever breaks. And people awake, a little hungover, but really none the worse off, all things considered.