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with Mar ia Nolan
Book Review: The Lake House at Lenashee by Sheila Forsey This month I am delighted to review the latest work of yet another Wexford author – it must be something in the water here that keeps throwing them up.
The story is about a group of people brought together at an old lake house in the West of Ireland in 1967 who witness something that would change each of their
For me, Sheila Forsey simply gets better and better, over
lives forever and silently haunt them to the end of their
a very short period of time she has honed her craft and is
days.
not just writing wonderful historical fiction, but has found a niche and a genre, almost within a genre, as she explores the hidden secrets of forgotten houses and those who lived in them. And she doesn’t just leave it there either, in her latest work The Lake House at Lenashee, she manages to seamlessly blend historical fiction, with suspense thriller, with scary ghost story, creating a page-turning masterpiece that keeps the reader both intrigued and enthralled from beginning to end.
Moira Fitzpatrick, a successful chef has lived in Paris for over fifty years, without returning to her native Ireland, but in her dreams at night, she is transported back to a most beautiful house on the west coast of Clare, with a glittering lake and a terrible secret. In 2019, when Julia Griffith’s father Desmond is dying, his rapidly deteriorating mind becomes obsessed with knowing what happened to a woman he once knew. A woman called Rosemary. Julia feels that finding this woman might bring some much-needed peace to her father’s tormented state. But as she tries to unravel who Rosemary is or was,
Sheila Forsey
her search leads her to an abandoned lake house in the West of Ireland which has been locked up for over fifty years. As each layer of the past is uncovered, Julia is drawn deeper and deeper into the dark recesses of her own mind tormented by the memory of something that happened at this house over fifty years before. This is a novel that you won’t be able to put down, and Sheila Forsey’s best piece of work to date, her beautiful use of language along with her theatrical bent and descriptive flair make The Lake House at Lenashee a great story and a most compelling read, as Sheila breathes life not just into her characters but into the house they inhabit. I love where Sheila’s writing has taken her, she has a real feel for these old buildings, magically weaving an intriguing tale into their bricks and mortar, and I simply can’t wait to read about the next one. – Maria Nolan
Page 96 - 1st October 2021
