Folly
From AwardAnnals
| This creative work has a long or truncated description. Please review the creative work guidelines concerning descriptions and edit down or replace the description. |
 | |
| Author(s) | Laurie R. King |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Bantam Books |
| Honors | |
| What Happens If Your Worst Fears Aren’t All In Your Mind?
Rae Newborn is a woman on the edge: on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world. She has moved to an island at the far reaches of the continent to restore the house of an equally haunted figure, her mysterious great-uncle; but as her life begins to rebuild itself along with the house, his story starts to wrap around hers. Powerful forces are stirring, but Rae cannot see where her reality leaves off and his fate begins. Fifty-two years old, Rae must battle the… | |
What Happens If Your Worst Fears Aren’t All In Your Mind?
Rae Newborn is a woman on the edge: on the edge of sanity, on the edge of tragedy, and now on the edge of the world. She has moved to an island at the far reaches of the continent to restore the house of an equally haunted figure, her mysterious great-uncle; but as her life begins to rebuild itself along with the house, his story starts to wrap around hers. Powerful forces are stirring, but Rae cannot see where her reality leaves off and his fate begins.
Fifty-two years old, Rae must battle the feelings that have long tormented her—panic, melancholy, and a skin-crawling sense of watchers behind the trees. Before she came here, she believed that most of the things she feared existed only in her mind. And who can say, as disturbing incidents multiply, if any of the watchers on Folly Island might be real? Is Rae paranoid, as her family and the police believe, or is the threat real? Is the island alive with promise—or with dangers?
With Folly, award-winning author Laurie R. King once again powerfully redefines psychological suspense on a sophisticated and harrowing new level, and proves why legions of readers and reviewers have named her a master of the genre.
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
“The thing about madness was, it just took so damn much energy, and it was so thoroughly tedious in the meantime.” Master woodworker Rae Newborn knows madness intimately, with every bone, every pore, every particle of her being. At 52, with three suicide attempts, extended hospitalizations, the death of her husband and daughter, and a vicious attack behind her, Rae has come to Folly Island, far out in the Straits of Juan de Fuca, to rebuild her life by building a house:
She would pull herself together, she would go and rebuild Desmond’s house, she would lift his walls and dwell within them quietly all the rest of her days. Everything that House was lay there waiting for her to take it up: House as shelter, House as permanence, House as a continuation and a legacy, comfort and challenge, safety and beauty, symbol and reality joined as one.
Bequeathed to Rae by Desmond Newborn, a great-uncle she never met, Folly Island is lovely indeed. But when Rae discovers Desmond’s journal in the 70-year-old ruins of his house, she learns that Desmond had his own internal horrors to confront on the island. As she labors in solitude, her prickly nature deterring all but the most determined of her would-be neighbors, it’s not just her well-being that’s at stake. Rae must prove herself sane if she is to have any contact with her beloved granddaughter Petra. So when the “skin-crawling feeling of being watched” doesn’t fade, she does her best to ignore it. But does paranoia have its roots in reality? And is Rae doomed to repeat her ancestor’s tragic end?
So effectively does King weave together past and present—the shrouded history of Desmond’s life and death on Folly, and the tense, dusty, exhilaratingly panicky account of Rae’s wrestling with old demons and new timber—that the future seems less important than the author might have wished. In other words, the eventual unmasking of Rae’s watcher pales in comparison to the gradual revelation of Rae herself within King’s haunted and haunting narrative. But with such a strong character and such moodily lovely prose, readers shouldn’t miss the denouement-driven trappings of standard suspense. —Kelly Flynn
Barnes and Noble
Laurie R. King knows how to ratchet up the tension, and in Folly she takes psychological suspense to an all-time high, as a 52-year-old woman with a history of paranoia and mental problems secludes herself on an island to single-handedly rebuild her great-uncle’s house and confront the demons that have plagued her.
Master woodcarver Rae Newborn had always felt close to her great-uncle, Desmond Newborn, even though she never met him. Perhaps it was the result of their shared battle with mental problems, for it’s been rumored that Desmond was never quite right once he returned from the front in World War I. Rae has never been quite right either, plagued by bouts of melancholia and paranoia that have disrupted her life and alienated her from her eldest daughter. Her mental state wasn’t helped any by the loss of her second husband and their young daughter, both of whom died in a tragic car accident a year earlier. Now Rae’s only meaningful relationship is with her teenage granddaughter, Petra. But before Rae can spend time with Petra, she must convince her daughter and son-in-law that she’s mentally stable.
Hoping to get a grip on her paranoia, Rae makes the decision to isolate herself on a small family-owned island in the Pacific Northwest where there is no phone, electricity, or plumbing. There lie the charred remains of Desmond’s Folly, the odd-looking house Rae’s uncle built years ago, only to have it burn to the ground soon after. Rae decides to camp out while working on the house, hoping that the solitude and hard work will help her recover her equilibrium. But as time goes by and the house begins to take shape, Rae finds that she still can’t escape the watchful eyes that have dogged her for years, especially when certain events lead her to wonder if they are real. With her life and her sanity on the line, Rae struggles to determine which of her fears are justified and which ones are born out of the paranoid imaginings of her diseased mind.
King depicts the frightening uncertainty of mental illness quite chillingly, blurring the boundaries between the real and the imagined. What’s more, she helps her readers relate to Rae’s paranoia and sense of imbalance by making significant events seem utterly mundane and then revealing the shocking truth in bits and pieces. Folly shows a skilled master of suspense at her sophisticated best. (Beth Amos)
Beth Amos is the author of several novels, including Second Sight, Eyes of Night, and Cold White Fury.
