A House of Ruin - by Jacqueline Harpman (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A gothic novel in the grand tradition of the nineteenth century--set in '90s Belgium--by the bestselling author of I Who Have Never Known Men.

An architect returning home from a business trip is stranded when his car breaks down. It is midnight. In the distance he sees a wrought-iron gate, and behind it, a beautiful, crumbling mansion that seems to belong to a different time. For a steep fee, he is given room and board by its strange inhabitants: a coterie of women, penniless and aristocratic, the last holdouts of a long line.

The formidable and fascinating women of La Diguière--three generations of mothers, daughters, and sisters unattached to anyone but themselves--have day jobs and study for exams. They have sold their Louis XVI furniture and sleep on IKEA beds, in pursuit of their single imperative: to maintain their closely guarded estate, now on the brink of final dissolution. But they do not despair; when the architect arrives, they have just set in motion a Jamesian marriage plot. Circumstances collude to keep the architect at La Diguière for longer than anticipated, and our Lockwoodian narrator readily gives in--their concerns are now his.

This is a story told with the psychotherapist's appetite for discord and the novelist's for motive. There is a way out; it will not be difficult. They have only to think of it, and, with total impunity, to act.

Review Quotes

"Jacqueline Harpman, author of an important and subtle body of work, delivers a bewitching comedy of good and evil... Beautifully crafted, in classic style."--Le Monde

About the Author

Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929. Her family fled to Casablanca when the Nazis invaded, and only returned home after the war. After studying French literature she started training to be a doctor, but could not complete her training due to contracting tuberculosis. She turned to writing in 1954 and her first work was published in 1958. In 1980 she qualified as a psychoanalyst. Harpman wrote over 15 novels and won numerous literary prizes, including the Prix Médicis. I Who Have Never Known Men was her first novel to be translated into English, and was originally published with the title The Mistress of Silence. Harpman died in 2012.

Ros Schwartz has translated numerous works of fiction and non-fiction from French, including Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men and We Were Forbidden, several Georges Simenon titles for Penguin Classics, a new translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince and Mireille Gansel's Translation as Transhumance. The recipient of a number of awards, she was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2009 and received the Institute of Translation and Interpreting's John Sykes Memorial Prize for Excellence in 2017.