Built around the stories of a house using to host a colony of artists, The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai is a story made of intertwinned memories. Set in different timelines, from our current times to the beginning of the 20th century.
I fell in love with Makkai´s writing since reading The Great Believers and The Hundred-Year... do have the promise of a story well told. Actually, each of the separate timelines describing the intrigues and drama of the artists does have a promising storytelling background. However, the plot is often broken as it simply looks of not going anywhere, with a very slow motioned character development stopped short once the focus is smoothly switched to the action.
I may be biased, as I usually prefer stories set in our current times, but the beginning of the novel, focused on an evolving shy love story between Doug - obsessed about Edward Parfitt, a once resident of the colony, married with Zee, whose mother is the daughter of the colony owner, and Miriam, also part of the colony´s family, an artist of recycled everything. The characters are alive and their story has an inner pace, until it simply stops to be took over to the other sequences of the history, which are by far extremely slow and not necessarily going anywhere.
However, the story is dense and there is a red thread to follow, adding surprising layers of information to the general history. Only that for my taste, it may either too slow or just sparsely connected to the narrative.
Those shortcomings though will not change an ounce my overall appreciation for Makkai´s style and I can´t wait to read her latest book: I Have Some Questions for You.
Rating: 3 stars
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