The Stopped Heart
Julie Myerson, 2016
HarperCollins
512 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780062409324
Summary
[A] beautifully written, yet deeply chilling, novel of psychological suspense explores the tragedies—past and present—haunting a picturesque country cottage.
Mary Coles and her husband, Graham, have just moved to a cottage on the edge of a small village. The house hasn’t been lived in for years, but they are drawn to its original features and surprisingly large garden, which stretches down into a beautiful apple orchard. It’s idyllic, remote, picturesque: exactly what they need to put the horror of the past behind them.
One hundred and fifty years earlier, a huge oak tree was felled in front of the cottage during a raging storm. Beneath it lies a young man with a shock of red hair, presumed dead—surely no one could survive such an accident.
But the red-haired man is alive, and after a brief convalescence is taken in by the family living in the cottage and put to work in the fields. The children all love him, but the eldest daughter, Eliza, has her reservations. There’s something about the red-haired man that sits ill with her. A presence. An evil.
Back in the present, weeks after moving to the cottage and still drowning beneath the weight of insurmountable grief, Mary Coles starts to sense there’s something in the house. Children’s whispers, footsteps from above, half-caught glimpses of figures in the garden. A young man with a shock of red hair wandering through the orchard.
Has Mary’s grief turned to madness? Or have the events that took place so long ago finally come back to haunt her? (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—June 2, 1960
• Where—Nottingham, England, UK
• Education—B.A., University of Bristol
• Currently—llives in
Julie Myerson (nee Pike) is an English author and critic. As well as writing both fiction and non-fiction books, she is also known for having written a long-running column in the Guardian entitled "Living with Teenagers" based on her own family experiences.
Education and journalism
Myerson studied English at Bristol University before working for the National Theatre. She has written a column for the Independent about her domestic trials including her partner, the screenwriter and director Jonathan Myerson, and their children Jacob (known as Jake), Chloe, and Raphael. Since then, she has written a column for the Financial Times about homes and houses. Myerson was a regular reviewer on the UK arts program Newsnight Review, on BBC Two.
Controversies
Julie Myerson was the anonymous author of "Living with Teenagers," a Guardian column and later nonfiction book that detailed the lives of a family with three teenage children. The column was stopped after one of the children was identified and was ridiculed at school, although Myerson had previously denied being the author three times to her own children. She admitted authorship only when it became so obvious there was no other option. After the Guardian confirmed the author of the series, it removed the articles from its website to "protect their privacy."
Myerson was also at the centre of a controversy in 2009 when details of her book The Lost Child: a True Story emerged; commentators criticized Myerson for what Minette Marrin in the Sunday Times, called her "betrayal not just of love and intimacy, but also of motherhood itself." Tim Lott called the book a "moral failure," adding "Julie has betrayed Jake for her own ambition."
Some critics, however, took the opposite view. The Guardian's Mark Lawson, a friend of Julie Myerson, called the book noble, saying that "the elegance and thoughtfulness of this book—and its warning of a fate that may overtake many parents—should not be lost in the extra-literary frenzy." The Observer's Kate Kellaway called the book rash but courageous, writing that Myerson had tried to "write honestly about a nightmarish situation and a subject that never seems to get the attention it deserves." The book was published in the U.S. in August 2009.
Fiction
Sleepwalking (1994) ♦ The Touch (1996) ♦ Me and the Fat Man (1998) ♦ Laura Blundy (2000) ♦ Something Might Happen (2003) ♦ The Story of You (2006) ♦ Out of Breath (2007) ♦ Then (2011) ♦ The Quickening (2013) ♦ The Stopped Heart (2016).
Nonfiction
Home: The Story of Everyone Who Lived In Our House (2004) ♦ Not A Games Person (2005) ♦ Living with Teenagers: 3 kids, 2 parents, 1 Hell of a Bumpy Ride (2008) ♦ The Lost Child (2009).
Recognition
Something Might Happen (2003) was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted both the W.H. Smith Literary Award and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Sleepwalking (2005) was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys (Mail on Sunday) Award.
(Adapted from Wikipedia. Retrieved 4/17/2016.)
Book Reviews
The story is heart wrenching, unremittingly grisly…. A thriller and…a page-turner…. The Stopped Heart exposes the flesh of the lives cut in half, the pain and loves of the past, and why they are no less real than the present.
Independent (UK)
Myerson evokes mystery and madness, with glimpses into devastating events, the full extent of which are slowly and skillfully uncovered.
Vogue (UK)
This novel is beautifully written and cleverly told. And it’s almost completely terrifying…. Edge-of-your-seat suspense…. It’s the sort of book you cannot put down.
Guardian (UK)
In this hair-raiser, Mary Coles moves to a country cottage that seems too good to be true…and it turns out, she’s right. Goose-bumps ensue.
Cosmopolitan
[An] overlong novel from British author Myerson focuses on two families living in the same village near Ipswich in Essex, separated by 150 years.... [The author] fails to unite the two stories into a suspenseful whole.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) On the first page, it’s clear that something indescribably horrific has happened…. This novel is impossible to put down; it will be read compulsively to learn the what of what has happened, if not the why. A stunner.
Booklist
Myerson twines a delightfully twisted tale, exposing the dark underbelly of love and the gaping, raw wounds of grief. She deftly holds back secrets, doling them out carefully, as if the reader, too, can only face so much horror at a time. By turns terrifying and heartbreaking; an enthralling spine-chiller.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add the publisher's questions if and when they're made available. In the meantime, use these LitLovers talking points to kick off a discussion for The Stopped Heart...then take off on your own:
1. How did you experience The Stopped Heart? Were you thoroughly terrified? Was it a page-turner or nail-biter for you?
2. Julie Myerson doesn't insert obvious breaks (not even an asterisk) when she switches from past to present. Did you find it difficult at times to tell which time frame you were in? Why does the author not define the two eras more clearly?
3. Myerson doesn't spare readers when revealing the tragedy that faces Mary and Graham Coles. Myerson releases information slowly; nonetheless, how painful was it for you to read?
4. The novel's prose is remarkable in the way it limns the shape of grief: Mary, for instance, is "struck by how pointless it felt to push a metal hook with an ornament hanging off it through a hole in her ear." What are some other passages which struck you as particularly descriptive of sadness?
5. The red-haired young man appears to Mary and disappears. But rather than be alarmed, she welcomes the hauntings. Why?
6. Talk about James Dix—how he appears out of a violent storm; how he insinuates himself into the center of the family, and how he gains control over Eliza. Who, or what, is he?
7. Just as Mary senses the cottage's former lives, Lottie makes references to its future ones. Consider the name Merricoles. Where else do past and future intersect with one another?
8. How do the two stories mirror one another? Consider the inclusion of abduction, cruelty, sexual obsession, and the impossibility of keeping children safe.
9. What does Myerson suggest about past evil? Does she offer a way to help us right past wrongs or offer or an explanation regarding the nature of evil? Or not?
10. Can any marriage withstand the kind of devastating tragedy the Coles have experienced? How would you describe the state of their marriage at the beginning of The Heart Stopped? What about Eddie's attentions to Mary? What were your initial feelings toward their budding attraction to one another?
11. Do the twin plots work as a narrative device in The Stopped Heart? Critics aren't always in agreement on this point. What do you think?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)