hro reviewed on
Helpful Score: 1
It would appear that I am the first to write a book on Gillespie. Who, if not me, was dealt that hand? These words are penned by Harriet Baxter, the narrator of Gillespie and I, in 1933, as she begins to write a memoir about events that transpired in Scotland in the late 1880s.
Harriet, an unmarried woman of independent means, decides to travel from London to Glasgow for the International Exhibit. While there, she becomes friends with the Gillespie family - Ned, a talented artist who is beginning to make a name in the Glasgow art world, Neds wife Annie, their two daughters Sibyl and Rose, and assorted extended family members. When tragedy strikes the family, Harriet is in the midst of it all, and this is the story she reveals in her memoir.
It is a spellbinding tale, and Harris is a gifted and dazzling storyteller. Harriet is most definitely an unreliable narrator, a daunting task that the author handles with remarkable dexterity. In fact, it is this that makes Gillespie and I the phenomenal book that it is. The reader is always left to wonder what is truth and what is not, a fact that becomes more and more obvious as the story unfolds. Nothing about the book is predictable. Just when you think you have something figured out, the author twists it ever so slightly and leaves you puzzled. And the ending.well, its just perfect in a way that is decidedly oblique and creepy.
I completely loved Gillespie and I and recommend it to anyone who enjoys Victorian gothic, twisted plots, and good storytelling. (And, really, how can you not enjoy those things?)
Harriet, an unmarried woman of independent means, decides to travel from London to Glasgow for the International Exhibit. While there, she becomes friends with the Gillespie family - Ned, a talented artist who is beginning to make a name in the Glasgow art world, Neds wife Annie, their two daughters Sibyl and Rose, and assorted extended family members. When tragedy strikes the family, Harriet is in the midst of it all, and this is the story she reveals in her memoir.
It is a spellbinding tale, and Harris is a gifted and dazzling storyteller. Harriet is most definitely an unreliable narrator, a daunting task that the author handles with remarkable dexterity. In fact, it is this that makes Gillespie and I the phenomenal book that it is. The reader is always left to wonder what is truth and what is not, a fact that becomes more and more obvious as the story unfolds. Nothing about the book is predictable. Just when you think you have something figured out, the author twists it ever so slightly and leaves you puzzled. And the ending.well, its just perfect in a way that is decidedly oblique and creepy.
I completely loved Gillespie and I and recommend it to anyone who enjoys Victorian gothic, twisted plots, and good storytelling. (And, really, how can you not enjoy those things?)
