- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (26 Jun 1997)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140251146
- ISBN-13: 978-0140251142
- Product Dimensions: 19.6 x 13 x 2.5 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 616,653 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
'Drumveyn had me hooked from the first page' -- Barbara Erskine 'Warm, friendly, involving ...lovely' -- Reay Tannahill 'A real find ... the genuine storyteller's flair' -- Mary Stewart 'An absorbing story with a perfectly painted background' -- Financial Times 'The power of a natural-born storyteller' -- The Lady 'A welcome new storyteller' -- Rosamunde Pilcher
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Financial Times
‘An absorbing story with a perfectly painted background'
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
22 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I picked this book up by chance needing something to read on the train. By the end of the second page I was hooked. The story moves effortlessly between the various members of the Napier family and draws together the threads of several disparate lives. Madeleine, widowed early, has to cope with the estate. Archie, her son, married to Cecil, a talented girl who is unable to cope with the life she has chosen and the decisions she has made. Lisa, Madeleine's daughter forced by circumstances to re evaluate her relationship with her mother while coming to terms with her husbands callous departure and the arrival in her life of his small daughter by another woman. Joss, needing space to look at her life and make a decision about where it is going. Into their lives come Tom Ferguson and Pauly Tobin. Tom takes on the job as factor and Pauly becomes cook/housekeeper. The story traces the way in which these two characters, Tom, still haunted by the breakup of his marriage, and free spirited Pauly become part of the family. Tom watches as Madeleine moves from the shadow of her late husband to become a vital person in her own right, meanwhile Pauly cuts a supportive and loving swathe through the entire family The book ends on a high note. The characterisation is very compelling and believable and it is difficult not to be drawn into their world. I found it unputdownable right to the end.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
12 reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Enoyable for a rainy weekend, but has one interfering flaw.
23 Dec 1998
Format:Paperback
A thoroughly enjoyable read on a weekend when it's raining, everyone you know is out of town, there's nothing on TV and you need a book you know you won't put down. I can only give this book four stars because Alexandra Raife uses a storytelling technique that somewhat ruins the read: She uses an excessive amount of flashbacks to tell the story instead of allowing us to experience events with the characters as they are happening. Often, she will start a paragraph with the character having leapt forward in the story only to quickly flashback and tell us how that character got there by using sentences like, "Madeleine had to smile to herself as she remembered Lisa telling her this morning that..." This technique begins to appear as laziness in storytelling, as this "summing up" will certainly end up meaning that in-depth details about an event are going to be left out in a way that they would not have been had we simply been allowed to watch events unfold. Imagine if, in "Pillars of the Earth", Ken Follett had decided to summarize events by having us experience them through different characters remembering things in flashback form. Instead of 1150 pages, we would have had 550. Raife had the makings of an 800-page saga: Family intrigue, divorce, abandonment on several levels, the large family estate, outsiders who infiltrate the inner circle, etc. Why not make use of these wonderful "saga tools"? For those who have read it, imagine if we had SEEN Stephen invite Lisa to come live with him instead of having this fact revealed through Madeleine's flashback of Lisa TELLING Madeleine, "I'm going to live with Stephen. Please be happy for me." We are deprived of at least 40-50 pages of romance and story development by not being allowed to watch the relationship between Lisa and Stephen unfold but rather having it "summed up" in a flashback. However, "Drumveyn" does entertain. That alone makes it worth four stars!!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Raife's First Is Still Her Best
2 Sep 2003
Format:Paperback
Having read just about all of Brit writer Alexandra Raife's other books, I finally treated myself to her very first, "Drumveyn," and I was simply enchanted.
Here is a deceptively simple tale of a modern Scottish family, far-flung and near to home, facing the typical stresses of everyday life, from divorce to infertility to adoption and all the rest. The home base is Drumveyn, a family seat fairly crumbling under the moldy tapestry of its ancient past--and the borderline cruel rules and regulations of the domineering father, Sir Charles Napier, who has just died when the book opens. Charles' widow, Madeleine, is a forty-something attractive woman whose true nature has been beaten down over the years not only by her husband, but by her horrid (and thankfully dead) mother-in-law, Lady Napier, and even the servants.
Madeleine's life is stifling, which is why her two married children have long-ago escaped the home front. But suddenly, everything changes, as circumstances bring first an orphaned aristocratic South American child, and then a surprisingly refreshing cast of characters, to Drumveyn. Madeleine begins to come alive--and the resulting story is wonderful. I was sad when the book ended, and glad to know that Raife has written a sequel, which I missed, and plan to order immediately!
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
This is a FEEL GOOD novel !
7 Mar 2000
Format:Paperback
If I could rate this book at over 5 stars I would....it is so well written and deals with relationships with family members in an honest and loving way. Totally took me away -- and in this day and age what a blessing......keep writing those novels.....wonderful !
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