num_pages: 336
description: Once upon a time Orla a woman a painter a lover.Now she is a mother and a wife and when her husband Nick suggests that their city apartment has grown too small for their lives she agrees in part because she does agree and in part because she is too tired to think about what she really does want. She agrees again when Nick announces with pride that he has found an antiquated Georgian house on the Dorset cliffsa good house for children he says tons of space and gorgeous grounds.But as the family settles into the mansionNick absent all week commuting to the city for workOrla finds herself unsettled. She hears voices when no one is around; doors open and close on their own; and her son Sam who has not spoken in six months seems to have made an imaginary friend whose motives Orla does not trust.Four decades earlier Lydia moves into the same house as a live-in nanny to a grieving family. Lydia too becomes aware of intangible presences in the large house and she like Orla four decades later becomes increasingly fearful for the safety of the children in her care. But no one in either womans life believes the stories that seem fanciful the stuff of magic and mayhem sprung from the imaginations of hysterical women who spend too much time in the company of children.Are both families careening towards tragedy? Are Orla and Lydia seeing things that arent there? What secrets is the house hiding?A feminist gothic tale perfectly suited for the current moment A Good House for Children combines an atmospheric mystery with resonant themes of motherhood madness and the value of a womans work.
language: English
title: A Good House for Children
publisher: Mariner Books