Review: What a riveting ghost tale which feels so real I lived it
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 11 4, 2012
I just finished reading this book and still have chills chasing up and down my arms. What a phenomenal read!Base Spirits takes us to England, with Clara and her scholarly husband Scott, who plans on wowing the romantic literary world at a symposium for his peers, revealing his coup on Keats. He's a dissatisfied husband, with a real attitude problem. His wife Clara is just like us, petulant when cornered, and 'difficult'. But a simple gathering of friends before Scott leaves for Oxford calls up the base spirits of Calvary Hall. (Just writing that gave me an onset of goosebumps). I worry I may have dark dreams tonight.With Scott gone, Clara is left alone for a few days in Calvary Hall where she literally falls into the past to suffer the horrendous domestic violence at the hands of a despicable husband who is a womanizing lecherous, gambling, drunk. This really knocked on my heart and got me feeling many emotions. Anger, relating to her fear, knowing all the trademark signs of a man who needs to control his family to prevent the people at church from knowing just how bad it is. But poor Phillipa, his wife, who Clara is sharing her past with, reliving it, she's in so much pain from her beating she can barely hold herself together while listening to her husband curse and call her a whore under his breath in church.Man, this really pushes my buttons (big time).In an awful twist of fate, Scott and Clara become Lord and Lady Calvary, reliving the trauma of the past.This continues to give me chills, tensing my body as I write this review. What a gripping tale. I read it in a day and couldn't put it down. The language is so well used I must commend the author on giving us a modern drama of a miserable wife and an overbearing husband and morphing it into a period drama of the same.It was truly compelling. I recommend this book highly with the maximum stars, because it freaked me out! So well written I lived the fear and tension every step of the way. Brilliant.