THE HAUNTING OF GAD'S HALL
By
Our review of Gad's Hall (1978) ended: ""How come we never get back to the present and find out what happened to those nice stiff-upper-lip Spenders?"" Well, here's what we asked for--plus lots more about the dreary Victorian Thorley family. Devil-worshipping daughter Lavinia killed herself and her illegitimate newborn babe in Volume I, and now her sisters are having troubles. Nice Deborah marries a tiresome Methodist farmer but gets fed up, leaves him, and becomes a pseudonymous bestselling novelist. Caro, married to a man she does not love, has a secret affair--and a child--with her first boyfriend, who jilted her in Vol. I. And dull, pretty Diana marries a social-climbing lawyer, makes pennies doing embroidery by candlelight, and has abortions. Meanwhile, the son of the house, George, poops along wasting the fortune his mum has built up through cattletrading; and Mrs. Thorley herself turns to drink. Once all these have been disposed of, we return perfunctorily to those present-day Spenders, who employ bell, book, and candle--in what must be the dullest exorcism in fiction--to get rid of Lavinia's ghost so they can really settle down and make Gad's Hall a home. Less a sequel than the second half of a tediously long novel, so Don't Read This unless you've read, and loved, Gad's Hall.