![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Witch Elm, in other words, hastens to let you know that something bad definitely happened at Ivy House, and that it’s come back to haunt poor Toby. “All it takes,” Toby tells us, “is one whiff of the right smell-jasmine, lapsang souchong, a specific old-fashioned soap that I’ve never been able to identify-or one sideways shaft of afternoon light” to bring him back to those halcyon days when everyone got along and, as far as he can remember, nothing bad ever happened. Like a previous noteworthy house from French’s oeuvre, the grandiosely ramshackle Whitethorn House in The Likeness, with its “worn stone steps,” “great brass knocker,” and “big rusted key,” Ivy House serves as a repository for all the reader’s sentimental notions of a life that once was, or could have been. Ivy House is a wonderful creation French provides just enough detail to goose the reader’s brain into filling in the rest. ![]()
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