GREAT HOUSE

by Kate Thompson ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 1954

Out of South Africa, not the sultry intensity of Daphne Rooke, but still the flush and flux of expectant emotion which prevails over the Derains who live in Groot Huis, one of the show places of the Western Cape. Nicolas Derain, at 49, is a judge, and perhaps too settled for his younger wife, Reniera, still haunted by the accident which had taken the lives of three of her children, while she here witnesses the choices the three which are left to her will make. And she also, after a gentle love affair with the young doctor Pieter Christian, has a last baby. Of the others, Beau, prodigal and restless, runs away to South America; Susan, who is the image of her mother, wins the love of the doctor who had once loved her; and Reinet, a nurse, finds a too brief life of dedication ahead when she marries the frail and failing Royale.... A sometimes scattered narrative (other members of this large, old family pass in and out of the story here), this commutes its vibrations of romance with an air of almost breathless suspension-- but gains much of its attraction from its setting which is gracious and traditional.

Pub Date: March 1, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Houghton, Mifflin

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1954

Categories: FICTION