The Hundred-Year House

The Hundred-Year House by Rebecca Makkai
338 Pages

The book is set in four time periods, 1999, 1950's, 1920's and 1900.  One reviewer called it a generational saga in reverse.  The central character however is the house Laurelfield which was built in 1900 and served as an art colony in the 20s, 30s and 40s until the Devohr family took control of it again.  In 1999, the daughter Zee is living with her husband in the coach house of Laurelfield while her mother Gracie and step-father Bruce are living in the main house.  Zee is a professor at the local college and her husband Doug is unemployed, but supposedly working on a thesis about a forgotten poet Edwin Parfitt who stayed at Laurelfield in the past.   When Bruce's son Case and wife Miriam come to cohabit the coach house, Zee begins to get jealous of an imagined relationship between Doug and Miriam.  Doug is anxious to get into the attic at the main house, hoping to find long forgotten papers about the artist colony and hopefully about Edwin Parfitt but is blocked repeatedly by Gracie who is hiding something. 

After everything comes to a head at New Years's the book proceeds to move backwards in time to reveal long forgotten and hidden truths in the house's past. Makkai's coverage of the past grows briefer and more fragmented, the further from the present we get, much like history.   We find out the answers to clues that were uncovered in 1999 and by the end all is revealed.

The characters in the book are largely unsympathetic and unlikeable.  However, Makkai's plot drives the reader to continue on to find out what happened in the past.  I originally choose the book because it talked about the house being haunted by a ghost but that isn't the complete truth.  I found that the house was more haunted by its past and the echoes of people who had lived there.