I could have left well alone, but I like a good ghost story, and when three ghost stories were read on the radio, in the dark chilly depths of an English winter, it was too good to miss. The first seemed OK, but a bit dull. Little did I know that it would be the best of the bunch. The second made both my husband and I look at each other with equally puzzled expressions. Was that it? The third was even more dreary - but calamity! The end of the recording was missing! I couldn’t stand not hearing the ending (even though we both felt sure we knew what it would be). I would have to get a hard copy of the book. And then, one night, everything changes. Everything she thought she was is turned upside down, and she has to decide how she will live her life going forward. She began work as a journalist on the then newly launched New York magazine, and continued to write for it and other American publications after her return to England. She wrote as a critic and reporter for ... On one occasion when she was 16 and returning to her school in Paris after a visit home, she was accompanied by Winston Churchill and his son Randolph who were en route to Rome for a meeting with Mussolini, whom Churchill admired at that time. Randolph always adored her, although the beautiful Diana never took him seriously. The story involves a tragedy; there is a violent history. There are shades, and suggested ghosts, and although the ending is not very original - in fact it has echoes of many classic ghost stories - it is quite creepy and the whole is quite well played out as an exercise in tension.

V (franchise) - Wikipedia V (franchise) - Wikipedia

With it's combination of discovery, exploration, and lifelike emotional characters, I couldn't recommend this book more strongly. What an emotional read this book is. The former brothers in arms that are staying with Gilbert are all suffering from PTSD. The story is set five years after the end of the great war. A beautifully poignant story. I loved this book.Morally and ethically, this opens up so many questions. I had no idea what Esme would do. I understood her conflicting thoughts and emotions and have to say, held a great deal of respect for how she handles it. The novel isn't without its problems... but fans of the author's work, archaeology, or historical sagas won't mind." - Library Journal

The Visitors’ Book: In Francis Bacon’s Shadow review

A lovely book - touching and emotional without being overly sentimental, with some delightful descriptions of Cornwall and nature. The narrative is told through the eyes of Esme Nicholls, a First World War widow and the war diary of Rory, a soldier on the Western Front. Esme works as a housekeeper for Fenella, whose brother Gilbert has bought a house in the wild landscape of West Cornwall. Gilbert has offered a bohemian home to four men he was close to in Flanders; here they find healing, in planning a garden, in painting, writing and pottery. When Fenella visits her brother one summer, Esme accompanies her. When the summer progresses, as Esme finds the location healing for her, her life is suddenly turned upside down by a betrayal that makes her question everything. This was a gorgeous post-World War I story about Esme Nicholls, a war widow and housekeeper who visits Cornwall with her employer for the summer and discovers a beautiful landscape, an eclectic group of veterans, and a possible future for herself. A Visitor experiment in breeding, if successful, will ravage the Eastern Coast Seaboards (causing serious environmental consequences). The experiment is based on the crivit species, which exists in the Visitor's home planet. [10]Witty, tense, and gut-wrenching ... [it] pulled me inexorably towards a place of profound emotion' Grace Chan, author of Every Version of You Jessi Jezewska Stevens’s frighteningly brilliant new novel The Visitors is both a bold reimagining of the recent past and an all-too-likely prophecy of what's to come. Caustic, intimate, and consistently surprising, this novel cements Stevens’s place as one of the great chroniclers of our cruel and terrifying times.’ Michael Zapata This stunning novel focuses on the impact that the First World War had on people, from the widows of men who died in foreign fields, to the soldiers who returned to a world that they no longer believed they belonged in, and the families who did not know how to handle them. Siberia”, a short story by Jessi Jezewska Stevens, was published in Harper’s Magazine and is available to read here. I came to accept this kind of behaviour as the norm on nights out with Francis, who once defined friendship as “two people continuously pulling each other to pieces”. At times, Denis and Francis tore into each other with such wounding malice, going for the jugular with every remark, that I imagined they would never see each other again. But they soon returned to the fray as if they couldn’t live without the self-destructive passion of their fights.

The Visitors - Sydney Theatre Company The Visitors - Sydney Theatre Company

While there, she will stay with Gilbert, in his rambling seaside house, where he lives with his former brothers in arms. Esme is fascinated by this community of eccentric artists and former soldiers, and as she gets to know the men and their stories, she begins to feel this summer might be exactly what she needs. The Visitors are composed largely of a dense form of cellulose, and they proceed to consume a quantity of trees and plant life in the US. Eventually, they start producing vehicles, superficially resembling human cars but capable of flying using the same unknown principles as the Visitors themselves, and apparently incorporating some element of intelligence, or at least instinct, since they do not crash into things as they move. The humans assume that the Visitors have created these vehicles as a gift in return for the plant matter which the Visitors are consuming, and the novel touches on the disruption such well-meaning gifts might incur on the Earth's economic systems. Toward the end of the book, the Visitors also start producing housing units for humans, and it is even implied that something living may be inside them— perhaps even a Visitor-produced version of humans themselves. I liked that the characters in the book read each other’s body language and are not afraid to mention it, that when at cross purposes they talk about it.

Thanks to the success of the Churchill’s Chartwell Appeal, you can scroll through an interactive version of this unique book to learn more about Churchill’s friends, family and colleagues. Each of the members of Gilbert’s household are deftly drawn so that the reader gets a sense of the very different ways in which the war has affected them, whether that’s physically, emotionally or psychologically. So there’s silence where once there was a beautiful singing voice, sleep disturbed by nightmares, a lingering sense of guilt at not having been able to save others. However, what also comes across is that they are a band of brothers who share a bond forged in war, one that can never be broken. The excerpts from Rory’s book documenting his experiences on the frontline provide the reader with a stark insight into the reality of war and depict the dreadful sights that he and his comrades witnessed. For Esme, reading Rory’s book also provides answers to the many questions that arise following the unexpected event part way through the book that turns everything on its head. This is like two novels in one: set one in Egypt and one in Cambridge and each would be perfectly good. Together, though, they make for one hugely overlong story. The Visitors could easily be cut by a third or more. Indeed, it is the length of Beauman’s books (such as her Daphne du Maurier sequel, Rebecca’s Tale) that has put me off trying her work before. However, I would have liked more of the nonagenarian Lucy’s (near) present-day reflections from her Highgate home, as an American documentary maker interrogates her memories. The Visitors is a slim book with a lot going on. . . The book accepts, and even delights in, the strenuous absurdity of its characters’ efforts to index the relationship between the virtual and the material, or to locate the source of reality in imagination.’ Annie Hayter Indeed they have. Not only for Suzie, but also for the reader. Any little frisson of fear, any sense of uneasiness or dread has now completely dissipated, overwhelmed yet again by humdrum domestic dullness. It’s not even claustrophobic, this family squabbling, and it seems so routine for the characters that it has no tension either.