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Title: All Things Cease to Appear

Author: Elizabeth Brundage

Narrator: Laurence Bouvard

Format: Unabridged

Length: 15 hrs and 27 mins

Language: English

Release date: 05-05-16

Publisher: Heron Books

Ratings: 2 of 5 out of 1 votes

Genres: Mysteries & Thrillers, Suspense

Publisher's Summary:

Upstate New York, 1980s.

The farm stood at the foot of the hill. Around it an aching emptiness of fields and wind. Within, a weight, a sense of being occupied with more than its inhabitants.

The Clares got it cheap. George knew why, though he didn't let on - he didn't want to give Catherine any excuses. He'd given her an easy excuse to get married. He wasn't prepared to give away much more.

Catherine, at home with their young daughter, has the feeling they're not alone. But she is helped by the Hale boys, young Cole and his brothers. Though they never tell her what happened to their mother in this house.

As the seasons burn and then bite, the Clares will find their place in this small upstate community. George, the inscrutable professor; his beautiful, brittle wife. He will try to tame the hollow need inside him. She will pull strength from the friends she makes. And as their marriage splinters, so, too, does the border between sanity and rage, between this world and the inexplicable beyond.

With masterful tension and understanding of human nature, Elizabeth Brundage has crafted a novel that is at once a community's landscape spanning 20 years and an intimate portrait of a disturbed mind. This is new American fiction at its most piercing, ambitious and chilling.

Members Reviews:

Literary Thriller, Featuring a Memorable Psychopath and Eerie Setting

How much you appreciate and enjoy Elizabeth Brundage's All Things Cease to Appear will depend in large part on what kind of novel you're expecting. A Knopf marketing blurb proclaims, "[T]his acclaimed writer combines noir and gothic in a novel about two families entwined in their own unhappiness with, at their center, a gruesome and unsolved murder." A less-esoteric tag would be "literary, psychological thriller," with a heavy emphasis on the literary aspect. Put another way, if you're looking for a fast-paced thriller with lots of suspense and action, this won't be your kind of novel. If, however, you appreciate great writing and characterization and are fascinated by the complex motivations and behaviors of psychopaths in the vein of Highsmith's Mr. Ripley, wading through this dense writing will be well worth your time.

The story, told entirely in flashbacks following the grisly murder of Catherine Clare, follows the fortunes of two families who reside in a farmhouse near Albany New York in the 1970s. The Hale family's mother and father commit suicide in the house after their dairy business goes belly-up, leaving behind three boys and a cursed house no-one wants to buy. At least until historical art professor, George Clare, starting a job in a nearby private college, scoops up the property at an auction and takes up residence with his wife Catherine and young daughter, Franny.

The Hale farmhouse turns out to be every bit as haunted as Stephen King's Overlook Hotel, as Catherine and other perceptive characters feel the ghostly presence of the deceased Mrs. Hale. The ominous house, combined with Catherine's growing awareness of her murderer's true nature, generate a creepy suspense even though the identity of the murderer is not hidden for long from the reader.

Brundage is a terrific writer, and she has brought this small town and its characters to life as fully and convincingly as possible.