Fri 8 Apr 2022
Reviews by L. J. Roberts
C. J. COOKE – The Nesting. HarperCollins, UK, hardcover, 2020. Berkley, US, paperback, 2020. Setting: Norway.
First Sentence: Aurelia sprints through the dark forest, her white nightdress billowing like a cloud, her strides long and swift across the carpet of bark and brambles.
Lexi Ellis has a troubled past but grabs an opportunity. She becomes Sophie Hallerton, nanny to the daughters of architect Tom Faraday on an isolated property in Norway. Far from an idyllic situation, there are things that can’t be explained and the suspicion that Farraday’s late wife didn’t die by suicide after all.
This is one of the rare times the prologue actually works. Cooke’s descriptions, metaphors, and inclusion of Norse folk tales add to the pleasure of the story. Tom is an annoying and perhaps inept architect, but his youngest daughter, Gaia is delightful. One appreciates how Lexi/Sophia grow through the story. She is strong; a survivor. When she commits an acts traditional thought of as “too stupid to live,” it makes sense and is in keeping with her personality.
Cooke is very good at seeding doubt about the characters. I’m not at huge fan of unreliable characters, but it works perfectly here. The story alternates between two time periods but in a way that is clearly indicated and not at all confusing.
For those who enjoy a bit of paranormal mixed with suspense, this is very well done. Norse folktales, elk, spectral figures are a few of the bump-in-the-night elements. The story sends shivers up the spine without crossing into horror. Best of all, it serves a purpose to the plot.
There are inconsistencies and a questionable ending. There is quite a bit of foreshadowing, but it works. However, the twists, metaphors— “Grief is not a mere felling —it’s an isotropic space.”, pacing, characters, plot, concept and heart-pounding climax completely offset those issues. Her descriptions make both locations and emotions real.
The Nesting is far from the typical Scandinavian noir. It’s a book one doesn’t put down, and an author to be read again.
Rating: Good Plus.
April 8th, 2022 at 7:04 pm
I can’t help but think how much that opening sounds like a Gothic, as well as the synopsis, a genre I wouldn’t mind seeing experience something of a comeback. Alas it also sounds as if it might be in the present tense, which isn’t an automatic rejection, but is often problematic for me.
April 8th, 2022 at 8:47 pm
Present tense is a killer for me, and I dearly wish that some very intriguing novels (Bullet Train, for instance) weren’t written in it. But, on the bright side, it helps me keep my “to read” book mounds less tall than they would otherwise be – and they are already mountainous!
April 8th, 2022 at 8:59 pm
From an online source:
“Present tense has more “immediacy†than past tense. Past-tense narration is of course “immediate†in a way, since the events of the characters’ past are happening in the reader’s present. But the immediacy of the present tense also allows us to convey a character’s change as it happens, not after the fact. In present tense, we are there with the narrator step by step as he changes, and hence the story’s climax can be both more immediate and intense.”
but then:
“Present tense restricts our ability to manipulate time. Altering chronological order and varying duration both work against the primary purpose of present tense, which is to create the feeling that something’s happening now. It seems natural to alter the chronology of events in past tense, when the narrator is looking back from an indeterminate present at many past times, but it seems unnatural to do it in present tense, when the narrator is speaking from and about a specific present.
“It is more difficult to create complex characters using present tense. While it is certainly possible to create complex characters in present-tense fiction, it’s more difficult to do so without natural access to the basic techniques that allow us to manipulate order and duration. These techniques allow us to convey our character’s subjective experience of time and thereby achieve more psychological depth and realism. They also help us complicate a character by placing her in a larger temporal context. The more we know about a character’s past, for example, the more we can understand her present. Without the kind of context flashbacks provide, our characters tend to become relatively simple, even generic.
“The present tense can diminish suspense. Because present-tense narrators do not know what is going to happen, they are unable to create the kind of suspense that arises from knowledge of upcoming events. The narrator of Doctor Faustus provides a good example of this kind of suspense: “The truth is simply that I fix my eye in advance with fear and dread, yes, with horror on certain things which I shall sooner or later have to tell. …†Carolyn Chute, author of The Beans of Egypt, Maine, laments that we have to sacrifice this particular kind of suspense when we use present tense. What we gain in immediacy, she says, we lose in tension. Present-tense fiction can create another kind of suspense, of course—the kind we feel when no one knows the outcome—but not this kind.”
https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-fiction/the-pros-and-cons-of-writing-a-novel-in-present-tense
April 8th, 2022 at 11:12 pm
LJ, Have you read anything else by C. J. Cooke? If so, is this kind of story, mystery with overtones of the paranormal, typical of her work? David Vineyard sees this as a Gothic, and I agree, but do you?
April 9th, 2022 at 11:54 am
Hi Steve, I have not read any of her other books. I looked at “The Lighthouse Witches,” but found it is written in three timelines and several POVs. That’s a dealbreaker for me. As for it being a gothic novel, I found this list of elements:
– Set in a haunted castle or house.
– A damsel in distress.
– An atmosphere of mystery and suspense.
– There is a ghost or monster.
– The weather is always awful.
– Dreaming/nightmares.
– Burdened male protagonist.
– Melodrama.
– Death.
– The beast within.
So yes, I’d say it qualifies.
April 9th, 2022 at 6:14 pm
Double down on that. I might give it a try, but for the present tense narrative. We all have our own idiosyncratic bugaboos!
April 9th, 2022 at 6:48 pm
Thanks LJ, it’s one of those if it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck situations.
In the day there were quite a few Gothic writers I followed, Mary Stewart, Phyllis Whitney, Norah Lofts, Elizabeth Peters, Evelyn Anthony… Good writers and good books even if I wasn’t quite the audience they were aiming at.
April 9th, 2022 at 7:04 pm
Despite the Norwegian setting Cooke is Irish and that’s enough to sell me on the book as being genuinely chilling. Some of the best ghost and Gothic stories came from the pens and typewriters of Irish writers. And some have yet to be bested: Sheridan LeFanu, Charlotte Riddell, Bram Stoker to name only three.