The House on Fripp Island
Rebecca Kauffman, 2020
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
336 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780358041528
Summary
A taut, page-turning novel of secrets and strife. When two families—one rich, one not—vacation together off the coast of South Carolina, little do they know that someone won't be returning home.
Fripp Island, South Carolina is the perfect destination for the wealthy Daly family: Lisa, Scott, and their two girls.
For Lisa’s childhood friend, Poppy Ford, the resort island is a world away from the one she and Lisa grew up in—and when Lisa invites Poppy's family to join them, how can a working-class woman turn down an all-expenses paid vacation for her husband and children?
But everyone brings secrets to the island, distorting what should be a convivial, relaxing summer on the beach. Lisa sees danger everywhere—the local handyman can't be allowed near the children, and Lisa suspects Scott is fixated on something, or someone, else.
Poppy watches over her husband John and his routines with a sharp eye. It's a summer of change for all of the children: Ryan Ford who prepares for college in the fall, Rae Daly who seethes on the brink of adulthood, and the two youngest, Kimmy Daly and Alex Ford, who are exposed to new ideas and different ways of life as they forge a friendship of their own.
Those who return from this vacation will spend the rest of their lives trying to process what they witnessed, the tipping points, moments of violence and tenderness, and the memory of whom they left behind. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—rural Northeastern Ohio, USA
• Education—B.A., Manhattan School of Music; M.F.A., New York University
• Currently—lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia
Rebecca Kauffman is originally from rural northeastern Ohio. She received her B.A. in Classical Violin Performance from the Manhattan School of Music, but as an inherently shy person she decided a career in music was not for her. After graduating, Kauffman stayed in New York City working in public relations. After a few years, she moved to Buffalo, New York, where she worked in a restaurant and taught music.
In her spare time Kaufmann turned to writing, something she had loved in her childhood—penning small books with help from her mother, who illustrated and laminated the finished product. As a young adult, she immersed herself again in fiction and realized she had found her calling.
Kauffman sent the first 30 pages of a novel she was working to New York University in the hopes of being accepted into its creative writing program. Although the manuscript was later trashed—"total garbage" as she referred to it in an NPR interview—her application was accepted, and she attained an M.F.A.
Kauffman's debut novel, Another Place You've Never Been, was published in 2016. Two years later came The Gunners, a book placed on many "must read," "eagerly awaited," and "a best book of 2018" lists. She published The House on Fripp Island in 2020.
She currently lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. (From various online sources, including WMRA Public Radio.)
Book Reviews
Page-turner pacing…. Combustible…. The tensions between predators and prey—and how quickly one can become the other—haunt the novel, from its ominous beginning to its heartrending conclusion. But Kauffman also deftly crafts moments of great tenderness and light throughout, reminding us that memory endures and life perseveres, even after a harrowing and grievous loss.
Charleston Post and Courier
The tensions between the haves and the have-nots offer an insight into contemporary America…. In watchful prose by turns powerful and delicate, the action builds to an event as inevitable as it was unpredictable. Gripping.
Sunday Times
Suspenseful…. While the fault lines… allow for plenty of tart observations on marital disenchantment, Kaufmann spins a secondary, far more disconcerting story about the toxic power of suspicion and rumour. A smart summer read.
Daily Mail (UK)
Kauffman’s keen, atmospheric follow-up to The Gunners explores class, friendship, and dark family secrets…inevitably, events spiral to a shocking conclusion. Kauffman’s characters leap off the page…. Readers will devour this suspenseful summer drama.
Publishers Weekly
Our assumptions about whose tensions, desires, rages, and shy longings might erupt into murder are provoked and reversed right up until the final pages, when the mystery of Fripp Island is revealed...An entertaining and ultimately tender book.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to help start a discussion for THE HOUSE OF FRIPP ISLAND ... then take off on your own:
1. What is wrong with the Lisa and Scott Daly's marriage? How does their relationship compare to Poppy and John Ford's?
2. Talk about the role that class plays in this novel—a well-off couple hosting a not-so-well-off family. How do the differences in wealth drive the story?
3. Why does Rebecca Kauffman open her novel with the ghost of a member of one of the families? What is accomplished by "giving away" the ending? Why not just tell the story chronologically?
4. Of the 10 characters in this novel, which ones do you care for most, identify with, or… perhaps dislike?
5. How do Lisa's insecurities affect her daughter's behavior?
6. Everything seems normal at first, relaxed and untroubled, but the normality is not to last. What are the initial signs of unraveling?
7. All the characters hold some sort of secret or inner feelings of jealousy, resentment, suspicion. Dissect the emotional turmoil of the characters.
8. Poppy makes references to the income disparity?
It bothered Lisa that people without money seemed to think they could squawk on and on about people with money, all the ways their lives seemed so different and strange, whereas Lisa would never dream of breathing a word about their lives or homes.
Is Lisa justified in her irritation? Is it possible for two childhood friends to maintain a close childhood relationship when one "marries up," creating a distinct class separation?
9. Were you surprised, even shocked, by the final revelation, the twist at the end?
10. What are your thoughts about the book's epilogue set years later? What does it add to the story?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online and off, with attribution. Thanks.)