Why a Booktrail?
Destination: New York and Melbourne Departure Time: 2000s
The contrast of one person in two locations and the way in which a location and setting can transform you as much as you can transform it.
Tumbledown Manor
What you need to know before your trail
Lisa is a writer but after tragedy in her life, she literally does need to start a new page. With deceit behind her she leaves New York and goes to live in Melbourne, Australia in an old house left to her by her great grandfather. It might be the oldest and shabbiest of houses she’s ever seen but to her it’s a fresh start and whilst this house needs more than a fresh lick of paint, it;s going to be something to take her mind off things.
She puts everything into stripping the paintwork, updating the decor and doing everything needed to get the house looking half way normal. She gets help from her son and some locals but the biggest transformation is in Lisa herself. She starts to grow into her new environment and finds that the house is changing her just as much as she is changing the house.
Locations
ResetTravel Guide
The contrast of one person in two locations and the way in which a location and setting can transform you as much as you can transform it.
New York
Lisa has everything here. A life in the city that never sleeps, nice clothes a big birthday party and a happy marriage, but all that comes crashing down and so she is left feeling alone and a stranger of sorts in her own home. She revisits the city for a while as a tourist to take her mind off things and goes skating on Rockerfeller rink, but her heart tells her she needs to escape further afield
Melbourne
The house she will call Tumbledown Manor is in a bit of a state. The clue is of course in the name and it is a dilapidated house which has seen no love for many years. It’s stayed in the family and has now been passed down by her great great grandfather. She is in the same battered state as the house but as she grows into it, the house becomes a part of her.
The house restoration gets underway with the help of the so-called ‘Grey Army’ who she has to keep fed and watered. A house in the country is going to take a lot more maintenance than she thought – the landscape and remoteness is not what she’s used to either. There were no bushfires or such like in New York and everyone sleeps here!
The house doesn’t just contain memories, there is something else the house is hiding in its creaky floorboards and walls. As she spends time in between writing her novel and renovating the house the two stories start to merge.
Careful when you enter the stables of Tumbledown House as there’s something stirring like the ghosts that appear to be in the stables!
Booktrailer Review
Clare: @thebooktrailer
This was a nice easy read and I just loved the story of the old house and the changes it brought around in Lisa as well as how the house changed itself. I felt the book has a nice message to it too of starting over and making the best of new changes in life but this wasn’t heavy handed or overdone in the slightest and all blended well in the story.
I have to say that the cover got me from the very start! There is just something very appealing about a tumbledown house and the smells and dust that you associate with it. It was the whole going home thing to lick your wounds but then find out that home is where the heart is kind of novel that was nicely done. And it was based on a story in the author’s own family to top it off! I think this is a nice way to have paid homage to that.
Where Next?
