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Title: The Writing on the Wall

Subtitle: A Novel

Author: W. D. Wetherell

Narrator: Gwen Hughes

Format: Unabridged

Length: 7 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 02-12-13

Publisher: Audible Studios

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 4 votes

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary

Publisher's Summary:

When Vera decides to travel to an old house in the New England countryside for a month-long escape from some devastating news about her daughter, Cassie, she has no idea her life is about to change forever. It begins innocently enoughpeeling the old wallpaper from the walls as a favor to the houses owner. What she discovers underneathwritten in India ink on the very walls of the house by a woman named Beth, in 1919is the beginning of the readers unsettling crossing into the unknown world underneath the paper.

The Writing on the Wall is a brilliantly realized journey into the connected lives of three women whose stories span a century, linked by the house they all briefly inhabit, and by the tragedies they've had to endure. And it's not just their own stories that reveal themselves. A brilliant schoolteacher, back from the war in the trenches, finds the pupils of his dreams. A young Vietnam draftee makes a stubbornly quirky separate peace. The moody, dangerously charismatic leader of a commune becomes the unlikeliest of heroes. An ordinary housewife's lonely battle propels her onto the national stage. A girl sent to Iraq tries making sense of the chaos and the pain. The Writing on the Wall is about stories that can't be told, but must be toldabout secrets that can't be shared, but must be sharedand the surprising ways people find to confront the truth.

Editorial Reviews:

W. D. Wetherell's absorbing conceptual narrative begins with a woman named Vera attempting to escape her troubles in an abandoned old house in the country. When she peels back the wallpaper, however, she notices that the home's previous owners have written the stories of their lives on the walls. Gwen Hughes depicts the unfolding surprises in The Writing on the Wall with precision, which gives the connecting tales of each of these women an appropriate power, showing how the unity of tragedy and heartbreak knows no temporal boundary.

Members Reviews:

What a Story!

When the story began with what seemed endless paper peeling, I wondered why a friend had recommended The Writing on the Wall. But as soon as Beth's tale began, I was hooked. Along with the two accounts uncovered on the walls of an old house, the main character Vera adds hers. She is helping to fix up her sister's summer house by stripping wall paper and adding new and is herself trying to understand the unrest in her own life. Wetherell wraps these stories in a deep sense of place, the remote woods of New England. Included are subtle references to the importance of the written word, the ugliness of bigotry, and the futility and shame of war.

THE BEST FROM THE BEST

Oh, my. WD Wetherell has written some of my favorite non-fiction books (Vermont River and Upland Stream); my all-time favorite short stories (The Man Who Loved Levittown; The Bass, The River and Sheila Mant) and now has produced what promises to be one of my favorite novels. The Writing on The Wall is cleverly designed -- no -- let's make that brilliantly structured -- to tell the story of three women who are seeking to make sense of their untenable lives. The setting, rural Vermont, is depicted in the precise and poetic language we have come to expect from Wetherell. We come to know the characters as well as we know ourselves --and care about them as we care about our friends. I can't recommend this book highly enough.