Puccini's Ghosts

July 31, 2006
At the start of British author Joss's somber fifth novel of psychological suspense, opera singer Lila du Cann (né e Eliza Duncan) returns to her childhood home on the Scottish coast to bury her estranged father. As she starts clearing out the family house, a chance visit to the attic awakens memories of the summer she was 15. Flashback to 1960. Lila's charming uncle George, a music teacher, arrives from London and her warring parents agree willy-nilly to finance an amateur staging of Puccini's opera "Turandot". Uncle George, the producer, hires an attractive tenor, Joe Foscari, for the male lead of Calaf. Soon Lila is smitten, but does Joe have designs on the adolescent girl or do his affections lie elsewhere? Despite a cast of expertly drawn characters, each unhappy in his or her own way, the plot is slow to develop. Still, Joss, whose "Half Broken Things" (2005) won the CWA Silver Dagger Award, shows real promise that she may one day join the ranks of Ruth Rendell and P.D. James. "(Aug.)" .

August 15, 2006
Silver Dagger Award winner Joss ("Half Broken Things") has been compared to crime writer Ruth Rendell, and, like Rendell, she excels at painting characters with psychological flaws. Set in the summer of 1960, her latest book revolves around a dysfunctional rural English family with a chronically depressed mother, Flossie (or Fleur, as she pretentiously prefers), who never quite succeeded as an opera singer, though she has trouble admitting that. When Flossie's flamboyant music-teacher brother comes to town, he decides that staging a community production of Giacomo Puccini's opera "Turandot" would be the perfect thing to snap his sister out her lethargy. Amazingly, he generates community-wide enthusiasm for and participation in the effort. Unfortunately, the growing infatuation of Flossie's 15-year-old daughter Lila with a lead singer from London triggers a disastrous chain of events. Moving back and forth in time from 1960 to the present, the narrative fills the reader with a sense of impending doom long before the characters suspect anything is wrong. Recommended for all public libraries. [See Prepub Mystery, "LJ" 5/1/06.]" -Caroline Mann, Univ. of Portland Lib., OR"

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2006
The death of her father brings opera singer Lila du Cann back to her childhood home in a small town in Scotland. Although she has tried to block out recollections of growing up with diffident parents, memories of her fifteenth summer, her " Turandot" summer, overwhelm her as she goes through the family's possessions. It was the summer of her operatic debut in a village production of Puccini's opera; the breakup of her parents' sad marriage; her first desperate crush on a boy; and her discovery of her energetic, optimistic uncle George having sex with her boyfriend. Relationships between characters unfold slowly, as perceived through the eyes of naive, angry Lila, whose actions precipitate the family's downfall. The story of Puccini's opera frames the novel, reinforcing a sense of the tragedy that Joss lays out for her own characters. The author's richly detailed backdrop and memorable characterizations pull readers into the sad novel, which gradually spins out into a wrenching, sharply delineated climax. Give this to readers who like Minette Walters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)