My Own Mind blog / Homeschool Atheist Momma: T. Greenwood's The Golden Hour

Friday, February 8, 2019

T. Greenwood's The Golden Hour

T. Greenwood is a new author to me and she's the type of author I want to keep an eye on. Though she already has twelve novels under her belt, I think that the best is yet to come. I think her artistic word craft will continue to improve.

The Golden Hour is a story about a woman who is in the process of sabotaging her own life just at the moment when the man who attacked her in her childhood, Robby Rousseau, is about to be released from incarceration. Wyn Davies is falling apart from the inside out and all of her life is evidence to this. She takes her daughter to an island home off of the coast of cold Maine to the vacation cottage of her friend to get her head together, to get some rest, to reevaluate what she's got going on, and to find a sense of safety.

The vacation home of a friend.
Is this an over-used trope?
I've never had a friend offer me a vacation home at my times of struggle.
HEY FRIENDS, GET WITH IT! 😆
SHRUG, it works.

T.Greenwood

The aged house Wyn agrees to care for on a rugged Maine island has been empty for decades; somewhere in an aged nook or cranny in the basement Wyn discovers a box of 35MM film canisters labeled Epitaphs and Prophecies. Intriguing, right? As anyone would do, Wyn begins getting rolls of film developed with her meager funds. Like time capsules, the photographs begin to help her piece together the life of the house’s former owner, an artistic young mother, and, somehow, to find a connection to Wyn's own vulnerability and fears...and to her own past, badly in need of closure.

My minor criticisms of the novel include the incomprehensibly literate four-year old daughter and the poorly-planned, taped-on man in the woods at the end of the novel, helping a conclusion to occur in the rain. But these two things can be overlooked or the reader can sustain the fantasy; I simply has a few moments of Oh, Hell No.

I did, most sincerely, enjoy the storyline constructed by the found film. It was like a cellulose strip of film negatives. Blowy, compelling, mysterious, exposing, ephemeral. A very well-done bit. I also loved, most sincerely, the conclusion and the secret-reveal. The conclusion of the book was quite satisfying and wonderful for a reader, if a bit brief. I also loved Greenwood's warm prose and beautiful light, even in a dark story. That is what will bring me back to her.

For this book and this author, I give a respectable six stars with plans of reading more.