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'the house is on fire' spotlights privilege, sexism, and racism in the 1800s.

Gabino Iglesias

Good historical fiction must bring to the page something that really happened while also filling in the blanks and treating character development, tension and even dialogue the same way fiction does.

Rachel Beanland's The House Is on Fire , which chronicles the burning of a theater and its tumultuous aftermath in Virginia in 1811, checks off all those elements while also tackling the rampant racism and misogyny of the times in the process.

On the night after Christmas in 1811, the Richmond Theater in Richmond, Virginia was full of people. The Placide & Green Company, a touring ensemble with more than 30 members, was putting on a play and the town was eager to see it. The place was packed and the play in progress when a fire broke out backstage thanks to a small oversight and some malfunctioning equipment. The fire spread quickly. With more than 600 people in attendance, chaos ensued. People ran for the door, trampling others in the process, while others jumped from the third floor in a desperate attempt to safe themselves. The staircase collapsed and the theater was soon engulfed in flames. Families and friends lost track of those they were with in the mayhem and many people died. Immediately after the horrific accident, some members of the Placide & Green Company decided to hide their role in the accident and instead spread lies about rebelling slaves with torches being responsible. A hunt for those responsible — and, thankfully, for the truth — followed.

The House Is on Fire is a mosaic historical novel told from the perspectives of four different people: Sally Henry Campbell, a recently widowed woman glad to relive the good times she had with her husband and who understands how the discourse changed after the fire and why it matters to set the record straight; Cecily Patterson, a young slave who has suffered years of abuse at the hands of her owners' son, is panicked about the possibility of being forced to go with him when he gets married, and decides to take advantage of the confusion and run away; Jack Gibson, a young stagehand who dreams of being an actor and one day working with the Placide & Green Company and who played a big role in the fire and wants the truth to come out; and Gilbert Hunt, a slave who works as a blacksmith — and becomes a hero during the fire — and is saving money in hopes of one day buying his wife's and then, if possible, his own freedom. The catastrophe, and the days that follow, bring them together in unexpected ways.

Beanland skillfully juggles the four main alternating points of view while also increasing the narrative's tension with each chapter. Between the lies, Sally's anger at the injustices around her, Cecily hiding and planning her escape to Philadelphia, Jack's constant fear and guilt, and Gilbert's bizarre position as an abused slave but also the town's hero after catching women who were jumping from the third floor, it's easy to forget that the events Beanland writes about actually happened. Also, given the plethora of secondary characters and subplots, it's incredible how much the author gets done with short chapters, lots of dialogue, and impeccable economy of language.

While much research went into this historical novel, the biggest challenge Beanland had was navigating the rampant racism and misogyny of the times, and she pulled it off with flying colors. The Black characters are as rich and complex as they deserved to be and their situation is presented in all its cruelty despite the fact that mental, physical, and sexual abuse of slaves was not uncommon at the time. Also, she delves deep into the sexism of the times, with Sally not only questioning things like why women aren't ever in the newspaper as interviewees but also doing everything she can to bring to light the truth about the cowardice displayed by most men once the fire broke out, after an article claims the men were yelling for their children and wives but it was "the other way around": "It's the women who were shrieking, while the men pushed past them — and in some cases, climbed over the them — to get to the door."

The House Is on Fire is wildly entertaining and it deals with touchy subjects very well. Sally, Cecily, Jack, and Gilbert all have unique voices and their stories are treated with equal care and attention, which speaks volumes not only about Beanland research skills but also the empathy she has for the people she writes about. This novel is a fictionalized slice of history, but in a time when so many treat teaching history as a taboo, it is also a stark reminder of how privilege, sexism, and racism have been in this country's DNA since its inception, and that makes it necessary reading.

Gabino Iglesias is an author, book reviewer and professor living in Austin, Texas. Find him on Twitter at @Gabino_Iglesias .

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When the World’s Most Famous Writer Visits a Hotbed of Amorous Intrigue

By James Wood

In 1926, Virginia Woolf wrote an essay about an innocent young art form: the silent cinema. Woolf argued that the movies were too literary. They would have to find their own artistic language, since they were currently imprisoned in a system of dead convention and mechanical semaphore: “A kiss is love. A broken cup is jealousy. A grin is happiness. Death is a hearse.” Once in a while, she had found herself in a darkened cinema with an apprehension of what film might achieve. “Through the thick counterpane of immense dexterity and enormous efficiency one has glimpses of something vital within,” she wrote. “But the kick of life is instantly concealed by more dexterity, further efficiency.”

In the same year, the English writer W. Somerset Maugham published “ The Casuarina Tree ,” a book of six short stories. Maugham was at the height of his success, as a great, and greatly rewarded, writer of immense dexterity and enormous efficiency. As his biographer Selina Hastings writes, “For much of his long life”—he died in 1965, at ninety-one—Maugham was “the most famous writer in the world.” He had the kind of celebrity that now attends actors, musicians, and criminal politicians. Wherever he went, his spoor was tracked by readers and journalists. His slightest pronouncements fattened a thousand provincial newspaper columns. By 1926, he had launched two very successful careers, as a novelist and a playwright (his collected plays would come to fill six volumes). A year later—the year he bought a villa in Cap Ferrat—“The Letter,” one of the stories from “The Casuarina Tree,” was adapted for the theatre. It played in London and on Broadway; two film adaptations appeared, in 1929 and 1940, the latter with Bette Davis.

Maugham’s worldwide renown could probably have existed only when it did, between the twenties and the fifties. Literary prestige was still culturally central. An audience hungry for literary storytelling overlapped with the audience for cinematic storytelling, and English was the lucky lingua franca of these two mass art forms. The British Empire might have been receding, but Maugham, like his friend Winston Churchill, moved through the world as if the sun were hardly setting on its sins. In the twenties and thirties, the writer made well-publicized journeys to India, Burma, the West Indies, Singapore, and Malaysia. A Maugham “tale” was a smoothly machined artifact—psychologically astute, coolly satirical, mildly subversive, and a bit sexy. Malarial British colonies provided excellent conditions for humid, erotic undercurrents. “The Letter,” set in Singapore, and based on an actual criminal trial, concerns Leslie Crosbie, the wife of a well-off British planter, who has been accused of murdering her neighbor Geoffrey Hammond. It seems a straightforward case: rape narrowly averted. Geoffrey had visited her in the evening, when her husband was away. He made sexual advances, and she shot him in self-defense. Leslie’s lawyer assumes that his client will be acquitted. Maugham’s story turns on the sudden discovery of a passionate letter, a lover’s note, in which Leslie appears to beg Geoffrey to visit her that evening. So was the murder a necessary act of self-protection or an avoidable crime of passion? Was Geoffrey there to assault Leslie, or to break off the affair? “The Letter” lunges toward its narrative bait.

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Maugham is a comfily unsurprising storyteller: the surprises are all procedural. Woolf’s desired kick of life can be felt now and again, but is efficiently muffled by the great dexterity of the plotting and style. A familiar realist grammar dulls all interrogation, and the reader is happily brought along. Characters are primitively blocked in: “Hutchinson was a tall, stout man with a red face.” “His blue eyes, behind large gold-rimmed spectacles, were shrewd and vivacious, and there was a great deal of determination in his face.” “Crosbie was a big fellow well over six feet high, with broad shoulders, and muscular.” A robust core of cliché and formula keeps the stories sturdy and shipshape. Woolf’s orchestra of gestures—a kiss is love, a grin is happiness—does its idle signalling: “She frowned as she thought of the reason which was taking her back to England.” (A frown is puzzlement.) There are also many twinkling eyes, sinking hearts, and ruthless stares. When Maugham attempts a simile, it’s often an odd combination of the exaggerated and the secondhand: “His fist, with its ring of steel, caught him fair and square on the jaw. He fell like a bull under the pole-axe.” Or: “ ‘Where’s the cream, you fool?’ she roared like a lioness at bay.” It was a saving insight of another world-famous, commercially successful, and utterly professionalized writer of the era, P. G. Wodehouse , that a wild comic poetry could be made from such automatic realist filler. Why have a character just walk into a room (and a tale) if she can enter “with a slow and dragging step like a Volga boatman”? Why have someone roaring like a lioness at bay if instead you can make your readers laugh with “She looked like an aunt who has just bitten into a bad oyster”? Wodehouse, an instinctive anti-realist anarchist, is not only more experimental than Maugham but invariably the more precise stylist.

You could call Tan Twan Eng’s new novel, “ The House of Doors ” (Bloomsbury), a kind of biblio-fiction: it offers, among other distinct pleasures, an imagined account of how Maugham came to write “The Letter,” and does so by combining novelistic hypothesis with the available biographical record. Eng’s novel, set largely in the Malaysian state of Penang, juggles two central narratives, one from 1910 and one from 1921. Somerset Maugham visited Malaysia in 1921, and liked it enough that he stayed for six months—prospecting for stories, enjoying the admiration and the hospitality of his colonial British hosts, and vacationing in freedom with his secretary and lover, Gerald Haxton. (Maugham had a wife and a child back in London. He had excellent practical reasons to be cautious about publicizing his bisexuality.) In Eng’s novelistic version, Maugham is famous enough that even one of the servants has read his work.

Malaya, as it was known then, was under British administrative rule, and “The House of Doors” is set in the colonial world that Maugham evokes in “The Casuarina Tree”—sweat-prickled dinner parties with excellent local cuisine and nostalgically bad English food, comfortable racial prejudice, insular colonial gossip. Maugham’s hosts are Robert and Lesley Hamlyn (Eng borrows the names from characters in “The Casuarina Tree”). Robert, a lawyer, is an old friend of Maugham’s from their younger London days. Eng elegantly animates a complex social scene, in alternating chapters seen from Maugham’s point of view (in the third person), and from Lesley Hamlyn’s (in the first person). Maugham, known as Willie to his friends, has arrived with Haxton; it isn’t immediately obvious to Lesley that the men are lovers, and the revelation is unwelcome. (“Why had I not seen it sooner? . . . We had a pair of bloody homosexuals under our roof. I shot a look at Robert—he knew; of course he knew.”) Lesley initially finds Maugham a little vulgar. She is unsettled by the writer’s coldly scrutinizing stare, and instinctively sides with Maugham’s abandoned wife against the two footloose gents who have taken up easy residence in her home. And Lesley has cause to feel neglected: she is living the underemployed existence of a colonial wife; Robert, who is eighteen years older, is chronically unwell; the marriage has curdled into respectful lovelessness. Maugham, meanwhile, receives a letter informing him that he has lost all his money. The New York brokerage firm with which he had invested forty thousand pounds has collapsed. Provoked by his losses to seek out promising new stories, he turns his attention to Lesley, who warily warms to her celebrated guest, and who indeed has stories to tell, three of which fill the second part of Eng’s novel.

Lesley’s tales, as recounted to Maugham, take us back to 1910, when she first read a newspaper report that her friend Ethel Proudlock had been arrested for murder. A neighbor, William Steward, visited Ethel’s bungalow in the evening, while her husband was out; he assaulted her, and she shot him in self-defense. Ethel Proudlock is not Eng’s fictional invention. Proudlock’s trial, which took place in Kuala Lumpur in 1911, caused a sensation in the Malayan expatriate community, partly because she was well connected, and mainly because, bucking the complacent colonial assumption, she was not acquitted but sentenced to death. Lesley tells Maugham about the trial (she was called as a witness for the defense) and her visits to Ethel in prison. The trial and its aftermath are masterfully recounted; the long episode is the most compelling stretch in Eng’s novel, which follows the broad outline of the historical record. Eng’s fictional twist involves Ethel confessing to Lesley that she had been having an affair with William Steward; that she had broken off the relationship, and he had refused to accept it; and that when he visited her in a rage she shot him in self-defense. Rather than publicly admit to being an adulterer, the Ethel of “The House of Doors” silently takes her judgment, and is sentenced to be hanged. The actual Ethel Proudlock, as far as we know, made no such private admission, and her relationship to William Steward remained ambiguous. (In “The Letter,” Maugham’s fictional addition is the letter itself. This novel allows us to examine the actual event of the trial, which is lightly fictionalized by Eng and was more heavily transmuted by Maugham, who, in turn, is novelized by Eng.)

Eng moves the Proudlock trial from 1911 to 1910, so that he can run this narrative together with another of Lesley’s reminiscences—her momentous encounter with Dr. Sun Yat-sen, who was elected the Republic of China’s first provisional President at the end of 1911. When Sun visited the Hamlyns in 1910, he was a roving revolutionary, on what was essentially a fund-raising tour for his cause among a receptive local population that included Indians, Malays, and Chinese. Again, Eng—who was born in Penang in 1972, of Straits Chinese ancestry—nicely splices the historical record with various fictive weavings. The actual Sun did visit Penang in 1910; the Penang Conference, in November of that year, promised to be Sun’s Finland Station moment, setting in motion the overthrow of the Qing dynasty. Eng’s novelized addition has Lesley, unusually for a white British colonist, ardently drawn to Sun and his political movement. Initially, Maugham assumes that Lesley must have had an affair with the captivating Chinese radical; in time, he learns from her that she had an affair not with Sun but with one of his local political allies, a Chinese physician she calls Arthur. The two lovers had regular assignations at a house in town originally bought by Arthur’s grandmother after her flight from China to Penang. It gives Eng’s novel its title: the walls are “hung with wooden doors painted with birds and flowers, or mist-covered mountains. The upper halves of some of the doors were decorated with intricate fretwork of dragons and phoenixes.”

“The House of Doors” is an assemblage, a house of curiosities. Eng can write with lyrical generosity and beautiful tact: moths are seen at night “flaking around the lamps”; elsewhere, also at nighttime, “a weak spill of light drew me to the sitting room.” Shadowy emotions are delicately figured: “His eyes, so blue and penetrating, were dusked by some emotion I could not decipher.” Lesley’s account of her affair with Arthur has a lovely, drifting, dreamlike quality—the adulterers almost afloat on their new passion, watched over by the hanging painted doors of Arthur’s house on Armenian Street. In these and other scenes, Eng demonstrates the control and the exquisite reticence that made his previous novel, “ The Garden of Evening Mists ,” a sharply magical collocation. But in this novel these moments seem to occur only when Eng provokes himself to some special point of intensity and concentration. They sit alongside plenty of slack and formulaic gesturing. History and geography arrive in large flat patches—say, the political context of Sun’s radicalism, or Malaysia’s special diversity. Early on, for instance, when Maugham tells Lesley’s cook that the dinner is the best meal he has eaten “in the East,” Lesley conveniently replies, “You won’t find anything like it anywhere in the world. . . . Over the centuries Penang has absorbed elements from the Malays and the Indians, the Chinese and the Siamese, the Europeans, and produced something that’s uniquely its own. You’ll find it in the language, the architecture, the food.”

In the same vein, Eng’s narrative can take on a tone of blandly fictionalized biography. When Eng dabs in a little backstory around Maugham’s unhappy marriage to Syrie Wellcome, the writing dozes off: “Their rows grew more frequent and stormy. After another quarrel, he told himself that the situation could not go on.” Maugham recalls returning to London from one of his long trips: “ ‘You missed Liza’s birthday,’ Syrie reminded him barely half an hour after he had stepped inside 2 Wyndham Place, his four-storey Regency house in Marylebone.” This passage occurs in one of the chapters seen from Maugham’s point of view; the writing is thus offering a kind of free indirect style. (It’s headed “Willie, Penang, 1921.”) It is unclear why Willie Maugham would have to remind himself that he lives in a four-floor Regency house in Marylebone. This kind of biographical positivism—Eng stays close to the historical facts—has the effect of forestalling the most fertile element of the novel, its manner of layering the narratives. (We have the “real” Maugham, the “real” Proudlock trial, and then the lightly fictionalized versions of both offered by Eng, and the more heavily fictionalized version of the trial offered by Maugham.) The potential for a vertiginous examination of the instabilities and deceits of storytelling collapses too easily into novelized biography. The novel sends one back to the source texts.

Would Maugham have any reasonable objection to Eng’s fictional portrait? Certainly, he’d be quite at home in Eng’s spacious suite of cliché. Here is Lesley at a colonial party at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel: “I nursed my glass of wine and eyed the women around me. . . . I groaned inwardly when I saw Mrs Biggs, the wife of the director of the Rickshaw Department, making a beeline for me. In a booming voice that could be heard over on the mainland, she asked me if it was true that Ethel Proudlock had been having an affair with William Steward.” Woolf’s cinematic reaction shots are everywhere: “Her laughter ebbed into a smile. She crooked an eyebrow.” “Robert laughed, slapping his knee.” “He swore softly at himself.” (A curse is anger.) “Willie looked at us, mortification flushing his face.” (A blush is shame.) And so on.

No doubt Eng is slyly mimicking the dated argot and patter of Maugham’s work, a fictional universe of stinging retorts, inward groans, arched eyebrows, and the like. (For instance, Eng uses the verb “chaff”—to tease someone good-naturedly—in what looks like conscious imitation of Maugham, who liked the verb.) You could say that this stylistic inhabiting in turn allows Eng to do something daring and eccentric: to write, as a contemporary Malaysian writer of Chinese descent, a novel set in early-twentieth-century Penang almost entirely from the perspective of the interloping white community resident there. Into this apparently stable and monochrome existence, Eng then introduces the gentle subversion and deviance of his more interesting subplots—Lesley’s passion for Sun Yat-sen’s cause, Lesley’s passion for Arthur, Maugham’s passion for Gerald, Robert’s erotic wandering.

But these relationships and encounters lack the power and the narrative emphasis of the central Ethel Proudlock story, which casts an enviably dramatic shadow over the whole book. And the subversions are too gentle, so that Eng’s portrait of Somerset Maugham and his colonial world has neither the rotten pungency of satire nor quite the vitality of a truly fresh realism. The kick of life always stubs its toe on cliché. Where is P. G. Wodehouse when you need him? ♦

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Book Review: “The House” by Christina Lauren

“The House” by Christina Lauren (2015)

Genre: YA, Fiction, Horror

Page Length: 400 pages (paperback edition)

Gavin tells Delilah he’s hers—completely—but whatever lives inside that house with him disagrees.

After seven years tucked away at an East coast boarding school, Delilah Blue returns to her small Kansas hometown to find that not much has changed. Her parents are still uptight and disinterested, her bedroom is exactly the way she left it, and the outcast Gavin Timothy still looks like he’s crawled out of one of her dark, twisted drawings.

Delilah is instantly smitten.

Gavin has always lived in the strange house: an odd building isolated in a stand of trees where the town gives in to mild wilderness. The house is an irresistible lure for Delilah, but the tall fence surrounding it exists for good reason, and Gavin urges Delilah to be careful. Whatever lives with him there isn’t human, and isn’t afraid of hurting her to keep her away. (description from Goodreads)

This horror novel asks the question of what you would do if the place you called home became your worst nightmare. The main character Delilah, has returned back to her hometown from a private boarding school. As she reacquaints herself to her home she falls for her longtime crush Gavin and they decide to date. The catch? A house that is anything but ordinary.

While reading this book the plot reminded me a bit of one of my favorite animated Halloween films Monster House with a mixture of other classic horror elements. The house is a living, breathing entity and all of the objects have a life of their own. from the detailed descriptions of it’s dark exterior and it’s uncanny ability to know Gavin’s needs/wants it puts the reader on edge. As Gavin and Delilah deepen their relationship, the more the house rebels and the secrets are slowly revealed. Gavin starts to question the true nature of the house and if it truly cares for him.

It starts off with a slow, steady pace that builds up the action of the plot. subtle things are placed here and there throughout the story such as mysterious shadows at the corner of the eye, and the ominous creaking of old unsteady floorboards. The best part of the horror aspects of this book is it lets the spooky parts slowly creep into the narrative.

Haunted house stories are my favorite horror trope and I thought that this book did not disappoint! It was the first non-romance (where it isn’t ate the forefront of the story) that I’ve read by Christina Lauren. I always enjoy their writing style. This book was straight up spooky! The unique plot of a living house had me hooked into the novel’s narrative and I couldn’t wait to see how it would unfold. It makes for good horror read as it’s chilling, eerie, and full of things that go bump in the night.

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clock This article was published more than  1 year ago

‘The House of Eve’ is a triumph of historical fiction

Sadeqa Johnson’s novel is an affecting and arresting exploration of young Black womanhood and motherhood in the mid-20th century

Reading Sadeqa Johnson’s redemptive gut punch of a novel, “ The House of Eve ,” made me recall the dissonance I felt in 2021 when National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi declared that the United States was experiencing a Black Renaissance . In Time magazine, Kendi and other prominent writers hailed the power of Black art across a variety of cultural forms. It felt strange to celebrate such victories at a time that otherwise felt so devastating . Two years on, amid a decidedly unfinished and inadequate reckoning , those feelings remain. And yet, it is also undeniable that the renaissance is real. Despite continued barriers to entry, Black creatives are producing phenomenal and socially relevant art at an impressive rate. It’s an especially great time to be a reader of historical fiction that illuminates the African American experience. “ The Prophets ,” “ The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois ,” “Libertie” and “ The Trees ” are towering achievements, but they are just the best known of a remarkably vibrant category.

“The House of Eve,” a new historical novel by the breakout author of 2021’s “ Yellow Wife ,” is an affecting and arresting exploration of young Black womanhood and motherhood in the mid-20th century and a significant addition to this exciting body of work. Though less harrowing than Johnson’s last, which portrayed the life of an enslaved woman forced to serve as concubine and companion to the warden of the infamous “Devil’s Half Acre” slave prison, “The House of Eve” is just as haunting.

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Johnson’s talents are in full bloom in this layered story with two distinctive and compelling young Black women at the center — both ambitious and talented strivers, who face a minefield of challenges in pursuit of their dreams. Despite the unwanted adult attention she attracts, Ruby Pearsall is just a child who’s had to grow up fast to stay safe. The determined 15-year-old high school sophomore fights to not just survive but also thrive, despite her precarious home life with a resentful mother, Inez, who was barely more than a child herself when she gave birth. There are others who love and care for Ruby, especially bold and unconventional Aunt Marie, who runs numbers, and wise Grandma Nene, but none of them ever went to college. What Ruby envisions for herself — to be a doctor — stretches not just their grasp but also their imagination.

Propelled in part by resentment of her father’s more prosperous family, who rejected her before she was born, Ruby imagines a triumphant future when they “would be down on their knees begging my forgiveness for abandoning me. They would see that I was good enough. Smart enough. Worthy of the last name, Banks, that they made sure Inez did not include on my birth certificate.” Just as important, “I was determined to prove myself, to give Nene her eyesight back — and to never have to depend on a man to keep a roof over my head.” To make her dreams a reality, she’s set on earning one of two full-ride scholarships designated for Black students across Philadelphia, and for Ruby, that means there’s no room for error. She has to be “impeccable in every way.”

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Compared with Ruby, Eleanor Quarles seemingly has it made. Raised in a “shotgun house” in a small town outside Cleveland, she didn’t grow up rich, but she had the support and protection of two loving parents. As a college sophomore at Howard University in Washington, she attends the most respected and storied historically Black university in the nation, an institution so steeped in Black aspiration that it’s sometimes called “Black Mecca.”

Despite their differences, Ruby and Eleanor have more in common than it appears. Separated by several years in age and just over 100 miles, Johnson’s protagonists face similar struggles as they strive for the same things. At its heart, this is a powerfully immersive story of Black love and feminine ambition constantly challenged but never diminished. In the years after the war and long before the women’s movement, these characters, and real women like them, were eager to use education as a steppingstone to a better life. But what Johnson deftly illustrates is that there’s more than financial advancement at play. Ruby and Eleanor prioritize education as the path forward, and their most concrete goals involve college degrees and well-paying careers (not just jobs), but their true desires run broader and deeper.

Ruby and Eleanor want love and careers, family, friendship, security, belonging, respect and to make a meaningful difference. Ruby wants to study medicine to help people. Eleanor is in love with books. She planned to study English, then fell in love with Black history working in Howard’s special collections. Were their stories unfolding in the wake of the women’s movement, observers might derisively label the scope of their desires as wanting to “have it all,” but Johnson reveals her characters’ wants as instinctual and elemental. And yet reaching for first love, explorations of sexuality, all the normal experiences of adulthood are fraught with danger. Both choose partners that society deems inappropriate. And for both women, sex has the potential to throw them off course.

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These struggles consistently resonate as Johnson effectively attends to Ruby’s and Eleanor’s interior lives as well as their circumstances. The one drawback as a reader is the gap between the quality of the social and psychological observation, worldbuilding, and ideas Johnson tackles regarding women’s lives and social hierarchies and the writing, which doesn’t rise to the same heights. At times, lines that are meant to be conversational or colloquial feel rote or cliched. And yet, such issues are relatively small. The novel’s great beauty lies in the truth it depicts.

One such truth involves Johnson’s sophisticated and specific portrayal of intraracial divisions. So often, when the idea of internalized anti-Black racism is broached, there’s a hard and false dichotomy drawn between those who buckled to white supremacy and those who stayed in community with other Black people. But there is more nuance to this aspect of Black American history, as writers such as Brit Bennett (“ The Vanishing Half ”) show. Through Eleanor’s romance with a medical student with deep roots in D.C.’s upper class, “House of Eve” exposes the colorism and classism ingrained in Black elite institutions. Eleanor may be enrolled at the Black Mecca, but she still feels like an outsider. Her working-class roots and darker skin mean she’s not as welcome as she had expected. Howard certainly didn’t invent or own colorism, but it’s notable how closely Eleanor’s experiences echo author Toni Morrison’s reflections about her time on campus in the same period.

None of the social currents Johnson depicts are as dissimilar to the present as we might wish them to be. Class, race, color, reproductive freedom, respectability politics: The issues and social forces Ruby and Eleanor grapple with are painstakingly drawn and achingly familiar. This is Johnson’s great strength: weaving distinctive characters in riveting situations that shine a light on broader experience. If not entirely artful, “The House of Eve” is engrossing, emotionally wrenching and socially astute storytelling. Time in Ruby and Eleanor’s world is time well spent.

Carole V. Bell is a Jamaican-born writer, critic and communication researcher focusing on media, politics and identity.

The House of Eve

By Sadeqa Johnson

Simon & Schuster. 384 pp. $27.99

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Table of Contents

• Rave and Reviews

About The Book

About the author.

Christina Lauren is the combined pen name of longtime writing partners and best friends Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, the  New York Times ,  USA TODAY , and #1 internationally bestselling authors of the Beautiful and Wild Seasons series,  Autoboyography ,  Love and Other Words ,  Roomies ,  Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating ,  The Unhoneymooners ,  The Soulmate Equation ,  Something Wilder ,  The True   Love Experiment  and  The Paradise Problem . You can find them online at ChristinaLaurenBooks.com or @ChristinaLauren on Instagram.

Product Details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers (October 6, 2015)
• Length: 400 pages
• ISBN13: 9781481413725
• Grades: 9 and up
• Ages: 14 - 99

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Raves and Reviews

“Masterfully told and wholly original, THE HOUSE is a bold new take on the haunted house genre. Don’t read it at home alone. Or at night. Or at all, if you scare easy. You’ve been warned!”

– Ransom Riggs, New York Times bestselling author of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children

“An entrancing, darkly romantic story that's equal parts beautiful and chilling. Once you enter The House , you'll be forever in its thrall. Welcome to your next obsession.”

– Alexandra Bracken, New York Times bestselling author of The Darkest Minds series

"Lauren taps into classic haunted-house memes, drawing those ideas to the max as they imbue House with a distinct, sinister personality. Intrigue builds, and suspense slowly creeps in....Don't read it at night."

– Kirkus Reviews [STARRED REVIEW]

"It will send chills down your spine—or worse if House gets angry."

"With a swiftly moving plot and eerie elementsthat will surely raise goose bumps, this novel can be enjoyed by voracioushorror fans and reluctant readers alike."

– School Library Journal

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Jackie thomas-kennedy, more online by jackie thomas-kennedy.

• Some of Them Will Carry Me
• Homesickness
• We Want What We Want
• The Souvenir Museum

The Dutch House

By ann patchett, reviewed by jackie thomas-kennedy.

In her eighth novel, Patchett revisits the concerns of previous works, including Commonwealth (the shifting plates of family life after divorce; the bonds among siblings; the process of forgiveness) and Run (the absent mother, the creation of family). The “Dutch house” in a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia is the site of Cyril Conroy’s failed first marriage to Elna, a woman who flees the ornate excesses of the home. It is also the site of Cyril’s second, catastrophic marriage to Andrea, a cruel stepmother who disinherits his children after his death. It is, most crucially, the site of narrator Danny Conroy’s cherished conversations with Maeve, his elder sister. Following Elna’s willful departure, Cyril’s sudden heart attack, and Andrea’s dismissal, the now-grown siblings establish a habit of parking on their old street with a view of their former home to hash out the past and consider their future. In these sessions, which they conduct for most of their lives together, Danny’s love for his sister—her beauty, her ferocious intelligence, her caretaking of her brother, her general kindness and decency—grows and calcifies until it is greater than any love in his life. For Maeve, it turns out, this type of love is reserved for their absent mother.

Elna is referred to in worshipful tones by everyone except her son, who remembers none of her merits but suffers the sting of abandonment. Danny is the only person who cannot absolve Elna. Other people in his life—including a chorus of former domestic employees at the Dutch House named Sandy, Fluffy, and Jocelyn—insist that his mother is a “saint.” This saintly behavior eventually extends to Andrea, who, in one of the novel’s strongest scenes, sees Danny standing on the lawn of the Dutch house, mistakes him for her late husband, and begins hitting the window “like a warrior beats a drum.” Though Elna is repulsed by the gaudy mansion, she moves back into the house to care for Andrea, who is suffering from either Alzheimer’s or aphasia, her family isn’t sure which. Her neediness draws Elna to her side.

Danny begrudgingly accepts his mother’s late appearance in his life, mostly to appease Maeve, whose heart attack precipitates Elna’s return. In the hospital, Maeve tells Danny, “‘I’m so happy. I’ve just had a heart attack and this has been the happiest day of my life.” Danny can’t bring himself to disrupt the newfound companionship between the women, so he relegates himself to the sidelines, where he tries to supervise silently. The other elements of his life—his successful real estate business, his children (a son, Kevin, and a precocious daughter, May), his lukewarm marriage—fail to command half the attention his sister does. Late in the novel, after Maeve, a diabetic, dies in middle age, Danny tells the reader, “The story of my sister was the only one I was ever meant to tell.” This is a depiction of wholehearted, undiluted love, of praise that cannot be held back. It is tiring to Danny’s wife, Celeste, whose mutual dislike of her sister-in-law occasionally reads like a sitcom trope, adding conflict to work that often functions like a love song. When Maeve refuses Danny’s resentment of their mother, challenging him to “[g]row up,” their argument has all the tension, emotion, and knowingness that Danny and Celeste’s relationship seems to lack.

If elderly Andrea hits the Dutch house window “like a warrior,” surely the war is a war of finding and keeping a home. Danny is at home—if home is to be utterly comfortable and safe—only with Maeve, and mostly in her car. He meets Celeste on a train. He encounters his mother, decades after she leaves, in a hospital waiting room. These transitional spaces are where the greatest emotional work of Danny’s life happens, perhaps because he’s embroiled in Andrea’s war. Having had his house taken from him—a house described with details as lush as Jean Stafford or Edith Wharton might offer—he becomes obsessed with real estate, succeeding in the industry just as his late father did. He buys houses for the women in his life, presenting them as casually as bouquets of flowers. Years later, Celeste admits she never liked her house, suggesting a thoughtless and speedy acquisition on Danny’s part.

Andrea—thief of all to which the Conroy children are entitled—is rarely and briefly on the page. Other than being rude to the household staff and unkind to her stepchildren, she has a flimsy presence, and is easily read as a villain who gets her comeuppance simply by aging. The novel also includes a significant digression to cover Danny’s time as a medical student, though he never practices medicine. The schooling is Maeve’s idea, a way to take advantage of the educational trust their father left to them. Its role is perhaps overlarge for its impact. The novel, save for a few dramatic scenes, could nearly be distilled to those hours in the car, with Maeve’s cigarette smoke and Danny’s eager questions, as they cobble together a family history and serve as each other’s witness. “The ghosts are what I come for,” Sandy says, explaining her continued presence at the Dutch house even after it belongs to Andrea. Readers, too, should come for the ghosts: they give the novel its richness, its texture, and its heart.

Published on April 1, 2020

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Book Review: Anonymous public servants are the heart of George Stephanopoulos’ ‘Situation Room’

This cover image released by Grand Central Publishing shows “The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis” by George Stephanapoulos with Lisa Dickey. (Grand Central Publishing via AP)

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The biggest challenge for an author tackling the history of the Situation Room, the basement room of the White House where some of the biggest intelligence crises have been handled in recent decades, is the room itself. As a setting, it’s pretty underwhelming.

In “The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis,” George Stephanopoulos describes how the room — actually a series of rooms — for much of its history didn’t live up to its reputation in popular imagination or media. The centerpiece of it, as Stephanopoulos writes, had “all the charm of a cardboard box.”

But what keeps readers engaged in Stephanopoulos’ history isn’t any behind the scenes schematics or technology. This isn’t a Tom Clancy novel, though it moves along as briskly as one. Instead, it’s the stories Stephanopoulos and Lisa Dickey share of the normally nameless and faceless public servants, the duty officers who have staffed the center since its inception during John F. Kennedy’s presidency.

Stephanopoulos, a political commentator and ABC anchor who worked in the Clinton White House, wisely zeroes in on a single crisis during each of 12 presidencies during the Situation Room’s history. Along the way, he reveals much about the differing management styles of the nation’s presidents and offers plenty of interesting pieces of history.

This includes the granular level of detail Lyndon B. Johnson sought in regular calls to the Situation Room late at night or early in the morning. The book offers a glimpse at the frenzied conversations that took place following Ronald Reagan’s shooting in 1981.

It should come as no surprise that the most riveting chapter centers around the moment that led to the most widely seen photo of the “Sit Room” — the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Stephanopoulos reveals that the photo — which showed former President Barack Obama in a cramped conference room receiving updates on the raid on the terrorist leader’s compound — could have looked a lot different. A larger room was available, but officials were worried about losing the audiovisual link if they tried moving it from the cramped room.

The duty officers whose stories are at the heart of the book are portrayed as apolitical figures, with one saying they “serve in silence.” Stephanopoulos’ book is a fitting tribute to them.

AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

The Eighth House by Linda Segtnan: An alarmingly compulsive read about a child murder

This book gives voice to nine-year-old birgitta sivander, who was killed in sweden in 1948.

Linda Segtnan includes herself as a character, writing with a confidence that illustrates an author can be both historian and human

Why are women drawn to true crime? Perhaps if we understand the scenario that led to a woman’s death, we can prevent our own murder. What then, does it mean to become obsessed with a child’s murder when you’re a mother? Not just a mother, but a pregnant mother?

In 1948, nine-year-old Birgitta Sivander was murdered. The culprit was never found. In The Eighth House Segtnan uses archival materials and her own journeys to the town in which the murder occurred to paint a picture of what happened in the time leading up to the murder, and the years that followed. Segtnan is pregnant with her first daughter, heightening both the urgency of the project and the intimacy with which she tells it.

In addition to being thoroughly researched and philosophically vigorous, it is an alarmingly compulsive read. The propulsion of a murder mystery and the countdown to a birth brings the story along quickly.

Despite this narrative intrigue, it is not a novel. The girl at the centre of the story died in brutal circumstances. Comparisons are there to be made with Ghost in the Throat and Into the Night that Flies So Fast, not just formally, but in how these texts use literature to give voice to voiceless individuals from history.

Series of shocks leaves Germany struggling to redefine itself in a moral maze

Plentiful Country: The Great Potato Famine and the Making of Irish New York: Forensic study highlights migrant triumph

Conor Niland: ‘The Irish got such a kick out of me playing Wimbledon, but unfortunately there was just one chance’

Michelle McDonagh: Writing the book, Ann Lovett, and her heartbroken sister Patricia, were at the forefront of my mind

One may question the liberties being taken with a person’s life when all the facts are not available, but it must be acknowledged that all historical books are written with the biases of their author. In texts such as The Eighth House the presence of the author within the narrative allows that bias to be considered. Segtnan includes herself as a character, writing with a confidence that illustrates an author can be both historian and human, amateur detective and dedicated mother. The occultism referenced in the title can be read through this lens. This intimacy elevates the story and shows that sometimes creative writing can stick closer to the truth.

Above all, The Eighth House interrogates the cycles of violence that led to Sivander’s and many other children’s deaths and how this may change. It is an original and captivating addition to a wave of women’s writing subverting the power structures behind the stories they tell.

[  Shanghailanders by Juli Min: Love, marriage and familial secrets through the generations  ]

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Disturbing the Spirits

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By Maria Russo

• Oct. 12, 2012

Law is meant to put out society’s brush fires, but in Native American history it has often acted more like the wind. Louise Erdrich turns this dire reality into a powerful human story in her new novel, in which a Native American woman is raped somewhere in the vicinity of a sacred round house, and seeking justice becomes almost as devastating as the crime. The round house itself stands on reservation land, where tribal courts are in charge, but the suspect is white, and tribal courts can’t prosecute non-­Native people. Federal law would also seem to apply, but the rape may have taken place on a strip of land that is part of a state park, where North Dakota’s authority is in force, or on another that was sold by the tribe and is thus considered “fee land,” administered under a separate tangle of statutes.

When he hears that the judge handling the case is uncertain whether the accused man can be charged at all, the 13-year-old boy whose mother was raped pursues his own quest for justice. Narrating this gripping story years later, having himself become a public prosecutor, Joe shows how a seemingly isolated crime has many roots. In the process, this young boy will experience a heady jolt of adolescent freedom and a brutal introduction to both the sorrows of grown-up life and the weight of his people’s past — “the gut kick of our history, which I was bracing to absorb.”

“The Round House” represents something of a departure for Erdrich, whose past novels of Indian life have usually relied on a rotating cast of narrators, a kind of storytelling chorus. Here, though, Joe is the only narrator, and the urgency of his account gives the action the momentum and tight focus of a crime novel, which, in a sense, it is. But for Erdrich, “The Round House” is also a return to form. Joe’s voice — at times lawyerly, ruefully reviewing the many legal limbos of Native American history, but also searching, attuned to the subtleties of his own and others’ internal lives — recalls that of Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, one of the narrators of Erdrich’s masterly novel “The Plague of Doves.” That’s appropriate because Joe is the judge’s son.

In “The Round House,” Erdrich has come back once again to her own indelible Yoknapatawpha, a fictional North Dakota Indian reservation and its surrounding towns, with their intricately interconnected populations. This time, we land here in the summer of 1988, when a new generation is about to come of age but old crimes, family dramas and love stories still linger in memory. If “The Round House” is less sweeping and symphonic than “The Plague of Doves,” it is just as riveting. By boring deeply into one person’s darkest episode, Erdrich hits the bedrock truth about a whole community.

Some of the memorable characters last heard from in “The Plague of Doves” reappear. Listening to his grandfather, Mooshum, talking in his sleep, the boy learns the story of the round house that gives the novel both a crime scene and a metaphorical heart. Its shape is meant to commemorate the body of a buffalo that once provided shelter during a snowstorm for Nanapush, a young man caught in difficult circumstances (whom Erdrich readers may recognize as one of the narrators of her early novel “Tracks” ). Built “to keep their people together and to ask for mercy from the Creator, since justice was so sketchily applied on earth,” the round house, like Native American culture itself, has proved tragically vulnerable.

Mooshum, randy as ever even though he’s now claiming to be 112 years old, provides not just priceless knowledge of the old ways but welcome comic relief in a novel about deeply serious matters. And he’s not alone. Grandmothers crack one another up as they embarrass teenagers with tales of an 87-year-old man who “can go five hours at a stretch.” These older Native Americans, as Erdrich writes of one old lady, have “survived many deaths and other losses and had no sentiment left.”

Sexuality seethes underneath every plot twist, offering bliss and violence as equal possibilities. Much of the novel’s suspense comes as Joe and his friends make their own first forays into the mysteries of sex, eager to be initiated into its secrets, even as they search for a man who has committed a terrible sexual crime.

In trying to track down his mother’s attacker, Joe is seeking an answer to the question of what makes a person turn violent — and what a society should do with violent people. Mooshum’s story of the round house also involves Nanapush’s mother, who is suspected of being possessed by an evil spirit, or “wiindigoo,” which sometimes happens in “hungry times” and makes a person “become an animal, and see fellow humans as prey meat.” As tribal tradition has it, justice in this sort of case follows its own rules, but it never wavers on the necessity of killing a true wiindigoo.

Erdrich juxtaposes a tradition like this against the Roman Catholic conviction that every evil, “whether moral or materi­al,” ultimately “results in good.” And she contrasts it with the legal system of the United States, which has failed Indians in the many oaths that have been broken and in the “toothless sovereignty” given to reservation authorities, as well as in what Judge Coutts labels their “jurisdiction issues.” These legal black holes have created an opening for predators to operate unchecked and unpunished, a situation that, we learn in an afterword, is only beginning to be remedied after the Tribal Law and Order Act was passed in 2010. Still: Be careful, liberal-minded reader! In Erdrich’s hands, you may find yourself, as I did, embracing the prospect of vigilante justice as regrettable but reasonable, a way to connect to timeless wisdom about human behavior. It wasn’t until I put the book down that I recognized — and marveled at — the clever way I had been manipulated.

THE ROUND HOUSE

By Louise Erdrich

321 pp. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $27.99.

Maria Russo is a frequent contributor to the Book Review.

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

An assault led to Chanel Miller’s best seller, “Know My Name,” but she had wanted to write children’s books since the second grade. She’s done that now  with “Magnolia Wu Unfolds It All.”

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Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

House foreign affairs chairman threatens Psaki with subpoena after her book’s false claim about Biden

The countdown was on for MSNBC’s Jen Psaki after a false claim in her book about the president’s watch sparked a threat of subpoena.

President Joe Biden’s first White House press secretary arguably made a lateral career move when she transitioned to her current role as a corporate media talking head. Now, evidence of her continued commitment to gaslight on behalf of her former boss landed her in hot water with the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Earlier in May, Psaki released her memoir, “Say More,” that was readily called out for making false claims about when Biden checked his watch during the dignified transfer of American service members killed at the Abbey Gate outside Kabul’s airport in 2021.

Tuesday, a letter addressed to the host’s attorney Emily Loeb from the Foreign Affairs Committee chair, Texas Rep. Michael McCaul (R), insisted that the former press secretary make herself available for questioning over the withdrawal from Afghanistan, or be made to appear via subpoena.

The letter read in part, “As a private citizen, willing and able to publish a memoir on her tenure as White House Press Secretary, I encourage Ms. Psaki to refrain from relying on thin legal arguments to dodge her responsibility to appear before Congress.”

“The Committee will not tolerate Ms. Psaki’s continued obstruction of its critical investigation,” continued McCaul.

As previously reported, the book had originally contended that “the president looked at his watch only after the ceremony had ended. Moments later, he and the First Lady headed toward their car.”

In her notorious “circle back” style, a statement from Psaki expressed, “…detail in a few lines of the book about the exact number of times he looked at his watch will be removed in future reprints and the ebook.”

Jen Psaki to scrub new book after whitewashing Biden show of disrespect for fallen soldiers https://t.co/1UNOSqTwu6 — BPR (@BIZPACReview) May 13, 2024

The committee had previously sought testimony from the former government employee in September at which point her attorney had directed requests to the White House’s legal counsel, and Psaki skirted by without facing questioning.

At the time, testimony from National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby and former State Department spokesperson Ned Price had also been sought over the president’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and the chair had said, “The rosy messages these individuals conveyed to the American people throughout August 2021 vastly differed from the scene playing out on the ground. It’s time for these officials to come forward and give our Gold Star families — and the American people — the answers they desperately want and deserve.”

In his letter to her attorney, McCaul went on to express what he thought about the former White House spokesperson’s attempt at revisionist history in a for-profit endeavor while not responding to requests from the legislature.

“It is troubling that Ms. Psaki seeks to profit off the Afghanistan tragedy,” he wrote, “and has felt comfortable writing accounts and making them available to the general public, but refuses to make herself available to Congress.”

A deadline for Psaki’s response to requests for interview was not readily apparent.

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Why Dorne Isn’t in House of the Dragon

Dorne is one of the most notable locations in Game of Thrones. What's the status of Dorne and House Martell in House of the Dragon?

Game of Thrones introduced many to a deeply complex world full of beautiful locales and bitter politics in a clash for ultimate power in Westeros. One of the most notable locations introduced in Game of Thrones is Dorne. Dorne is located on the southern portion of Westeros and boasts hot desert areas. The Dornish are descendants of the Rhoynar who later intermarried with the Andals and the First Men, creating a cultural melting pot in the process.

The Dornish are proud of their heritage and the trouble they gave to King Aegon I Targaryen, or "Aegon the Conqueror." House Martell's House words are "Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken" for a reason as the Dornish were able to maintain independence after Aegon's Conquest , although they later were to be conquered by King Daeron I Targaryen. With a long history with the Targaryens, Game of Thrones fans may be initially surprised at the lack of Dorne in House of the Dragon . However, there's a great reason why Dorne may never appear in House of the Dragon .

What Role Did Dorne Play In Game Of Thrones?

Notable dornish people in game of thrones :.

• Prince Doran Martell
• Prince Oberyn Martell
• Ellaria Sand
• Nymeria Sand

Game of Thrones' Dorne Storyline Was Nothing Like the Books

Before delving into the role of Dorne during the Targaryen civil war called the "Dance of the Dragon," it's worth revisiting the role the region played hundreds of years later in the Westeros era most fans are familiar with. Prior to Game of Thrones , the Iron Throne saw a drastic shift as the Targaryen dynasty had ended thanks to King Robert I Baratheon's revolt known as "Robert's Rebellion." Dorne, and their longtime head House Martell, were at the very center of this conflict. Princess Elia Martell had been married to Prince Rhaegar Targaryen, the son of King Areys II Targaryen and heir to the Iron Throne. Prince Rhaegar was also the brother of Daenerys Targaryen. The pair had two children named Rhaenys and Aegon Targaryen.

However, at the tourney of Harrenhall, Rhaegar named Lyanna Stark and not his wife as the Queen of Love and Beauty. Rhaegar later allegedly abducted Lyanna. In truth, the pair ran off together, got married, and had a son also named Aegon Targaryen – better known as Jon Snow. Lyanna was betrothed to the future King Robert I who loved her dearly to the point where he orchestrated a rebellion. During the Sack of King's Landing, Elia Martell and her two children were viciously killed by Ser Gregor Clegane, the Mountain, under the orders of Tywin Lannister.

Dorne ultimately maintained loyalty to the Iron Throne even after King Joffrey I Baratheon took over after the death of his father, despite suspicions that they would align with Renly Baratheon. In turn, Dorne was allowed to have a place in King Joffrey I's council, and his younger sister, Princess Myrcella Baratheon, would marry Prince Trystane Martell – the youngest son of Prince Doran Martell, head of House Martell. This was, diplomatically, the Lannister's penance for what happened to Elia Martell.

There were still hard feelings over what happened to Elia Martell. Prince Doran's brother, Prince Oberyn Martell, became Dorne's representative on King Joffrey's council in King's Landing. Prince Oberyn secretly sought a firm confession from Tywin Lannister. When the opportunity arose to fight Ser Gregor Clegane in Tyrion Lannister's trial by combat, his uncontrollable desire to get that public confession and kill Clegane ultimately led to his death. Following his death, Prince Oberyn's lover Ellaria Sand, and his daughters, the Sand Snakes, successfully staged a coup in Dorne, killing Prince Doran and the remaining members of House Martell, and taking over Dorne. Ellaria Sand aligned herself with Danaerys Targaryen during her conquest but was later captured and killed. At the end of Game of Thrones , an unnamed Prince of Dorne leads the way and participates in the Great Council that elects the final monarch of Game of Thrones .

What Was Dorne Doing During The Dance Of The Dragons?

House of the dragon's battle of the stepstones was what fans wanted from game of thrones.

Hundreds of years in the past, Dorne has a contentious relationship with House Targaryen. At the time of House of the Dragon , Dorne was still independent. King Aegon I attempted to conquer Dorne in a clash known as the First Dornish War, which the Dornish staved off thanks to guerilla warfare. After King Aegon I's sister/wife, Queen Rhaenys Targaryen, and her dragon Meraxes were killed in battle, a peace agreement was formed.

A Second and Third Dornish War would occur in the 70 years after this peace agreement, but the role of the House Martell themselves was minor. These were mostly the doing of the "Vulture King," a Dornish outlaw, and their successor. House Martell denounced the Vulture King and stayed out of the conflict. A Fourth Donish War would later be triggered thanks to Prince Morion Martell, who was frustrated by the lack of support for the second Vulture King and took matters into their own hands. Prince Morion and his army were rather quickly defeated. These occurred during the lengthy reign of King Jaehaerys I Targaryen, who House of the Dragon viewers know from the opening scenes of the show.

A Complete Targaryen Family Tree in House of the Dragon

While unseen, Dorne, led by Prince Qoren Martell, did align themselves with the Triarchy – an alliance between the Free Cities of Lys, Myr, and Tyrosh during the War for the Stepstones. Daemon Targaryen and Corlys Velaryon commanded on behalf of King Viserys I Targaryen in a conflict that is featured during the first season of House of the Dragon . Given House of the Dragon's penchant for skipping across timelines, this would not have been a satisfying introduction for Prince Qoren and the Dornish as so little time would've been devoted to their debut. In the books, King Viserys I considered a marriage between Prince Qoren and his daughter, Princess Rhaenyra Targaryen, before electing to marry her to Ser Laenor Velaryon.

When the Dance of the Dragons erupted, both Targaryen warring factions sought Dorne's aid in battle. Prince Qoren refused both and elected to remain neutral. Prince Daemon played a significant role in pushing back the Dornish at the Stepstones while the crown maintained allegiances with their historical enemies in the Stormlands and Reach. From the perspective of Dorne, they had no reason to get involved. Their enemies are fighting and it would presumably be to their benefit to let the two sides kill each other . These attempts to woo the Dornish could still be featured in House of the Dragon in season two or the future. If so, that will be the extent of their appearance in the show. The Dorne have a minimal role in this era of Westeros.

Fans May Eventually Get A Hefty Dose Of Dorne, Anyway

Other successor shows in the works:.

• A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight (debuting 2025)
• Aegon's Conquest
• Nine Voyages (Animated)
• The Golden Empire (Animated)
• The Iron Throne (Broadway Play about Robert's Robert's Rebellion)

Game of Thrones: Complete Timeline, Explained

Fans of the Dornish and House Martell may lament the lack of this iconic region, but there's a chance HBO will more than makeup for it. One of the pitched World of Westeros shows that was known to be in development is Ten Thousand Ships . Ten Thousand Ships is set to be based on the warrior queen Nymeria, who led Rhoynar refugees to Dorne and later became the ancestor of House Martell and the founder of the Dornish realm.

Ten Thousand Ships , the in-universe book that tells the story of Nymeria, does make an appearance in House of the Dragon as a book assigned to a young Princess Rhaenyra and her close friend and later adversary Alicent Hightower . This book would represent a minor link tying the two former friends together and serves as a continual reminder to both of how close they used to be. The inclusion of this link is unique to the show and was likely included to begin getting fans acclimated with Nymeria in anticipation of the Ten Thousand Ships show.

Where Was House Velaryon During Game of Thrones?

As for the Ten Thousand Ships show, the status is currently unknown. As of April 2023, George R. R. Martin says the show is still in development simply saying, "The Nymeria show is still in development." A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight , based on the beloved Dunk & Egg novellas, is the next World of Westeros show on the way and is expected to debut in 2025. This means if Ten Thousand Ships does eventually get made, fans may have to wait until at least 2026 to see Dorne once again.

For now, it appears the project has been shelved indefinitely. In an interview in April 2024 for Inverse , writer Brian Helgeland states that the project "came out great, but I think they felt the period of my show was too far removed from the pillars of the original. That’s why it hasn’t been picked up yet, but nothing is ever dead." Time will tell if Ten Thousand Ships will ever get made or when Game of Thrones fans will see Dorne next. Hopefully, that time will come sooner rather than later.

House of the Dragon

Two centuries before the events of A Game of Thrones, House Targaryen—the only family of dragonlords to survive the Doom of Valyria—took up residence on Dragonstone. 

Ocean House

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• Excellent 800
• Very Good 105
• Terrible 68
• All languages ( 1,114 )
• English ( 1,105 )
• French ( 4 )
• Danish ( 1 )

" They have a spa and indoor pool. "

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" Bathroom exhaust vent in one bathroom not working. Hotel should have silverplate flatware, stainless steel belongs in a hospital. "

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OCEAN HOUSE - Updated 2024

• United States

Coastal Georgia

Glynn County

• Jekyll Island

Willet's Lowcountry

Good for special occasions

Good for business meals

Make a reservation

Order delivery or takeout, dining areas.

• Dining Room

Additional information

• Dining style Casual Elegant
• Price $31 to $50
• Cuisines American, Seafood, Steak
• Hours of operation Breakfast Daily 7:00 am–10:30 am Lunch Daily 11:00 am–3:00 pm Dinner Daily 5:00 pm–10:00 pm
• Phone number (912) 635-4545
• Website http://www.westinjekyllisland.com/the-reserve-restaurant
• Payment options AMEX, Discover, Mastercard, Visa
• Dress code Smart Casual
• Executive chef Chef Kevin Truong
• Private party contact Luke Kelly: (912) 223-7707
• Location 110 Ocean Way, Jekyll Island, GA 31527
• Neighborhood Jekyll Island
• Cross street 110 Ocean Way, Jekyll Island, GA 31527
• Parking details The Westin Jekyll Island will offer complimentary valet parking with validation. The Westin Jekyll Island also offers complimentary self parking.
• Additional Bar/Lounge, Beer, Cocktails, Corkage Fee, Full Bar, Gluten-free Options, Non-Smoking, Patio/Outdoor Dining, Patio/Outdoor Dining, Private Room, Takeout, View, Wheelchair Access, Wine

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35 savannah restaurants to love this valentine's day, morning signatures, crab cake benedict $25.00.

House made crab cakes, English muffin, fresh lemon, hollandaise sauce, fresh chives, home fries

Jekyll Island Breakfast $18.00

Two eggs your style, choice of breakfast meat, grits or homefries, toast or biscuit

Biscuit and Gravy $16.00

House made biscuit, country sausage and chorizo gravy

Beef Braised Chilaquiles $24.00

Braised beef, salsa verde, cilantro, lime, cotija cheese, fried eggs, shaved onion, tortilla

Something Sweet

Stuffed french toast $20.00.

Mascarpone, cream cheese, cinnamon sugar, whipped topping, mixed berry compote

Blueberry Hotcakes $18.00

Buttermilk batter, blueberry, Vermont maple syrup, powered sugar, honey butter

Chicken & Waffles $22.00

Buttermilk brined chicken, golden waffle, Vermont maple syrup, honey butter, fire roasted peach compote

Freshly-Brewed Starbucks Coffee & Teavana Teas $4.00

Orange, apple, grapefruit, cranberry $4.00, milk* 2%, skim, almond, coconut, soy or chocolate $4.00, biscuits & gravy $12.00.

open-faced biscuit, country sausage gravy, choice of side

Granola & Berries $12.00

Yogurt, house made granola, berries, Savannah bee honey

Egg White Scramble $17.00

Spinach, chives, tomato relish, side fruit

Irish Steel Cut Oats $13.00

With banana or apple, golden raisins, brown sugar

Avocado Toast $17.00

Honey grain toast, avocado mousse, poached egg, roasted tomato, quinoa, sesame seeds, fig balsamic

Seasonal Fruit Platter $17.00

selection of seasonal fruit, greek yogurt, savannah honey, banana oat muffin

Westin Fresh by the Juicery

Mango, cilantro & spinach smoothie $8.00, melon, turmeric, pear, lemon juice $8.00, spinach, cucumber, cilantro, lime juice $8.00, coconut refresh $9.00.

watermelon, coconut water, cucumber, mint

On the Side

Griddled breakfast meat $8.00.

crispy bacon, country ham, pork or chicken apple sausage

Selection of Cereals $8.00

choice of milk

Bread $5.00

white or whole grain toast, buttermilk biscuit

Breakfast Potatoes $8.00

Creamy stone ground grits $8.00, seasonal fruit selection $6.00, what 448 people are saying, overall ratings and reviews.

Reviews can only be made by diners who have eaten at this restaurant

• 4.1 Service
• 3.9 Ambience

Noise • Moderate

Great for scenic views

Great for fine wines

Great for outdoor dining

Most Booked

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Does Willet's Lowcountry offer delivery through OpenTable or takeout?

Willet's Lowcountry offers takeout which you can order by calling the restaurant at (912) 635-4545.

How is Willet's Lowcountry restaurant rated?

Willet's Lowcountry is rated 4 stars by 448 OpenTable diners.

Is Willet's Lowcountry currently accepting reservations?

Yes, you can generally book this restaurant by choosing the date, time and party size on OpenTable.

110 Ocean Way, Jekyll Island, GA 31527

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