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The good house : a novel / Tananarive Due.

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: New York : Atria Books, c2003.Description: 482 p. ; 24 cmISBN:
  • 0743449002
DDC classification:
  • 813/.54 22
LOC classification:
  • PS3554.U3413
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
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Holdings
Item type Current library Collection Shelving location Call number Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Phillipsburg Free Public Library Adult Fiction Adult Fiction FICTION Available 674891001405865
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

From the American Book Award winner and author of "one of the most talked about debuts in the horror field since the advent of Stephen King" (Publishers Weekly) comes a terrifying story of supernatural suspense, as a woman searches for the inherited power that can save her hometown from evil forces.Tananarive Due's first three novels gained her legions of dedicated fans who recognize a true master of the genre. Now she returns with her best yet -- a chilling story set in a small town in the Pacific Northwest. The house Angela Toussaint's late grandmother owned is so beloved that townspeople in Sacajawea, Washington, call it the Good House. But is it? Angela hoped her grandmother's famous "healing magic" could save her failing marriage while she and her family lived in the old house the summer of 2001. Instead, an unexpected tragedy ripped Angela's family apart. Now, two years later, Angela is moving past her grief and taking control of her life as a talent agent in Los Angeles, and she is finally ready to revisit the rural house she loved so much as a child. Back in Sacajawea, Angela realizes she hasn't been the only one to suffer a shocking loss. Since she left, there have been more senseless tragedies, and Angela wonders if they are related somehow. Could the events be linked to a terrifying entity Angela's grandmother battled in 1929? Did her teenage son, Corey, reawaken something that should have been left sleeping? With the help of Myles Fisher, her high school boyfriend, and clues from beyond the grave, Angela races to solve a deadly puzzle that has followed her family for generations. She must summon her own hidden gifts to face the timeless adversary stalking her in her grandmother's house -- and in the Washington woods.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Horror author Due (My Soul To Keep; Living Blood) brings voodoo to the fictional town of Sacajawea, WA, in a cleverly plotted tale of possession and magic gone awry. When Angela revisits the Toussaint family mansion with her teenage son, Corey, her heart is fixed on a reunion with her estranged husband. Corey's aversion to the town, his trouble with local racist kids, and his sudden preoccupation with magic go unnoticed by both parents. The increasing power of an ancient evil accidentally released years ago by Angela's deceased mambo grandmother begins to overtake the house, leaving muddy traces and making eerie noises in the plumbing. When Corey and his friend dabble in voodoo rites, a baka possesses Corey, changing his personality and eventually leading to his suicide. Unleashed into the world, the baka attacks others in the community with disastrous results. Only Angela, who has spent three months in a mental hospital following Corey's death, can perform the cleansing rituals that will heal the rift between her family and the gods. But can she fight the demonic powers allied against her? A weak ending somewhat mars this great, old-fashioned, haunted-house story, but libraries should purchase for popular collections.-Jennifer Baker, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Using elements of the traditional haunted house story, Due (The Living Blood) constructs an ambitious supernatural thriller reinforced by themes of family ties, racial identity and moral responsibility. The Good House in Sacajawea, Wash., has belonged to four generations of the Toussaint family, but current scion Angela Toussaint hopes to sell it. Originally the home of her beloved grandmere Marie, who used vodou to heal the sick, the house has dispensed mostly pain to Angela, including the suicide of her mother when she was a child and the death of her son, Corey, who shot himself in the basement with a gun belonging to his father, Tariq. Angela's planned final visit dovetails with tragic incidents in town suggesting that a malignant force linked to the house is revving up. Then she discovers that Corey stumbled upon Marie's magic tools, and that, in a forgotten incident, Marie abused her healing powers to avenge an act of racism. Meanwhile, Tariq, who has become a demon incarnate under the house's influence, hastens to Washington for a showdown with his estranged wife. Due handles the potentially unwieldy elements of her novel with confidence, cross-cutting smoothly from past to present, introducing revelatory facts that alter the interpretation of earlier scenes and interjecting powerfully orchestrated moments of supernatural horror that sustain the tale's momentum. An ending that seems forced by an excess of sympathy for her characters is the only misstep in this haunting tale from a writer who grows better with each book. (Sept. 1) Forecast: A high-profile African-American female writer, Due (who's married to SF author Steven Barnes) deals with a rare theme in the horror genre-the contemporary black experience in America. Her last novel, The Living Blood (2001), won an American Book Award. With another novel, My Soul to Keep (1997), under film development, plus a six-city author tour for her latest, Due is due for big sales. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

After her 15-year-old son Corey's suicide, Angela Toussaint spent several months in a mental hospital. Now, divorced and focused on her work, she receives word of potential buyers of her grandmother's house in Sacajawea, Washington, in which Corey died. Realizing that she must put the tragedy to rest, Angela decides to go to the house to try to understand exactly what happened. Sacajawea is, however, a town beset by evil, in which stomachaches lead to suicide in apparently healthy, well-balanced persons. Indeed, it seems that a ravenous spirit there is hell-bent on killing everything in its path. Further, that spirit seems somehow connected with the history of Angela's family. Flashbacks explore the events leading up to Corey's death, and Angela's learning about her son's experiences enables her to connect with the spirit of her beloved, long-dead grandmother, who then exerts a fiercely protective and positive influence on her. Angela's relationship with her ancestry ultimately affords her true healing and redemption from the wound of Corey's suicide, and also an unexpected miracle. --Paula Luedtke Copyright 2003 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Due returns to the supernatural fiction she mines so well in the series begun with My Soul to Keep (1997) and The Living Blood (2001), though her latest falls outside that series. Due keeps richly packed and layered description alive with lines of suspense laid through each marbled paragraph. Since the jacket copy gives away the opening plot turn (a suicide), readers may find the first chapter somewhat overcrowded and slow-going until the background material sucks them in and gives power to a forthcoming death that the novel itself only faintly prefigures (thus the reader seemingly knows more than the author). Angela Toussaint divorced her heavy-handed husband Tariq Hill a few years back and now divides care of their son Corey. She's a Hollywood lawyer who runs her own entertainment agency and has come back to her dismally spare Pacific Northwest home village of Sacajawea, Washington, for a summer vacation with Corey. Tariq shows up and Angela finds herself bedding her ex. They live in the marvelous Good House, built by a pharmacist in 1907, then willed to Angela's Gramma Marie Toussaint, a Creole herbalist regarded by ignorant townsfolk as a supernatural doctor. Gramma Marie's wild daughter Dominique gave birth to Angela but later commits suicide at the kitchen table with an overdose of Sominex, as discovered by Angela. Gramma raises Angela, who inherits Good House. Corey himself has a wild streak, stages a robbery and steals his mother's African voodoo ring, an heirloom, for a girlfriend--or so he says. He doesn't get it back to Angela for four years. Then, during a Fourth of July party she hosts with Tariq, Corey shoots himself in the cellar with Tariq's old gun, and Angela skids into a mental hospital for three months. An invisible force brings more murder and suicide to Sacajawea, and, with her old lover, Myles Fisher, at her side, Angela faces her demon as past and future intertwine. Spread the good juju. Due weaves a stronger net than ever. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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