Barbara Erskine - Midnight Is a Lonely Place.

Review by Lydia Birch on show 23rd April
i first heard about barbara erskine when i lived in kent & heard her on the local essex radio, and found her book in a charity shop.
'midnight is a lonely place', starts off in modern day, (in this case 1994)
after a broken love affair, kate kennedy, a successful biographer, moves to a remote cottage on the wild essex coast to work on her book.
when alison, her landlords daughter, uncovers a roman site nearby, long buried passions are unleashed.....
in her lonely cottage, kate is terrorized by mysterious forces.
what do these ghosts want? that the truth about the violent events of long ago be exposed or remain concealed?
kate, alison & her brother greg must struggle for there lives against earthbound sprits and ancient curses as hate, jealously, revenge and passionate love do battle across the centuries......

what i love is the fact her stories start in modern day and weave into the past with historical facts and ghostly goings on, the way she goes back to the romans and tells the story of what happened with the romans on that wild essex beach and how when alison finds the grave in modern day it starts up all the unrested ghosts and spirits that could never rest,

if you love a spooky ghost story this is for you,

if you like things that are both slightly scary, and has history weaved in to the story then have a read, i'm sure you'll enjoy it.

23rd April 09

Yep St Georges Day to-day but no red rose in buttonhole. One of the things I will enjoy doing, out of the 6 suggested by Boris Johnson, is to go on a pub crawl & support the English pubs which are under a threat from closure.
Anyway, my guests this week are Lydia Birch & Corinna christopher.
Lydia is reviewing Barbara Erskine - Midnight is a Lonely Place, a historical novel with a twist of the supernatural.
Cloud Garden by Tom Hart Dyke - a true story about a botanist who went looking for Orchids in central America against all advice from places like 'Lonely Planet'. He & his mate were taken hostage for 9 months by terrorists. Lydia did not like this book.
Corinna reviewed Man in the Picture by Susan Hill ( most reviewers considered this not as good as 'The Woman In Black')& The Return by Victoria Hislop (many reviewers preferred the Island, her first book, and were disappointed in this her second).

Barbara Erskine - Lady of Hay

review by showhost

(832 pages first published in 1986 - her first book) 

1980's Jo Clifford is a journalist.  she is writing an article for a magazine about peoples belief in a past life.  Jo is a complete non-believer and is out to prove it is all nonsense. 

she is invited to sit in on a couple of hypnotic sessions, with the patients consent, and both with different hypnotists.  The first one doesn't alter her opinion.  The second sessions patient cancels so Jo offers to be regressed/hypnotised as long as she can (tape)record the session for her notes. 

Jo proves to be very susceptible and regresses to the time of King Henry 11 and King john.  she is Matilda De Braose, Lady of Hay, she is married to brutal William and it is the 12th century.  She is in love with Richard De Clare but the young (yet to be King) John is in love with her although he is yet a child/youth.  As he gets older his desire for her increases and as she spurns his affections his anger mounts and he is going to make her & her children suffer. 

Jo becomes addicted to regression as she wants to find out what happens to herself as Matilda & her family - she suffers the pain of watching the slaughter of the Welsh prince and his family at the hands of her husband and her own eventual slow death.  she wakes as Jo with cut and bruised hands from having scratched the castle walls when in regression.  She hears the cries of a baby her baby from the past as do her present day neighbours.

Her regressions start to affect her present day relationships, her fated love for Nick and his brother Sam, himself a hypnotherapist.  But it isn't just Jo who has regressed into that time and  took on the life of another, those close around her also regress as they carry on the fight for the love of Lady Matilda   Some are out to make her pay for her infidelities and others to atone for the wrong they caused her.

It is an addictive book and a historical love story.  The past is atmospherically re-created and I preferred that to the present day.  This is the first of this authors I have read.  I would probably try another sometime but not yet.   also wondered Is this where Kate Mosse got her ideas for her books?