The Mysterious Affair at Castaway House
Rosie Churchill, aged eighteen in 1965, has run away from home, hiding an ugly secret from her mother. She secures a flat at the once-magnificent mansion called Castaway House, now broken into apartments. The manor, high on a cliff of an English resort village, was the summer retreat of the wealthy Bray family, but now it has fallen into decay. Everyone whispers about the terrible scandal that took place there decades before. Rosie hears strange whistling at night and finds an old, half-finished drawing of a young man with the initials R.C.
In 1924, Robert Carver arrives at the mansion to visit his dissolute cousin Alec Bray. Alec has married an actress named Clara, whom he insists he now hates. Robert at first dislikes the sardonic, calculating Clara, but then he’s drawn to her. Alec is in danger of losing his wealth through his excessive drinking and risky projects. Robert is about to lose much more in a torrid affair. Someone goes missing, or is it murder?
A disheveled old man stumbles into the manor in 1965 and swears he used to reside at Castaway House, but his memory is in tatters. Rosie pities him and tries to help him untangle his past—a past that will involve her and have major consequences on the present.
The novel alternates between ’24 and ’65, secrets and lies woven beautifully in descriptive prose. Lam expertly shows how her characters’ deceits and selfishness can destroy people. The ultimate villain who causes the tragedy that intertwines these two stories is well-disguised from the reader until the end. British slang gives the story an authentic feel. The only complaint would be the overuse of adverbs. A spectacular debut.
