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Recomended Books on Fireplaces and Chimneys and Other Stuff

4/20/01

Dark Harbor House
by Tom Demarco

Reviewer: Lisa Alther, author of KINFLICKS and OTHER WOMEN

I was enchanted to discover a sunlit ruin of a summer mansion, full of quirky characters pursuing hilarious private obsessions. Book Description: Bring together a wonderfully varied mix of characters in a once-grand Maine island summer "cottage," leave them to their own devices over the course of a long, idyllic summer in the late 1940s, and you have all the ingredients for a fine comedy of manners. Author Tom DeMarco starts with a simple little love story, weaves in tantalizing details of the old mansion's not totally respectable history, and adds a hint of gentle satire to create a novel that is touching, memorable, and deliciously... read more

It's just like a good dessert, December 3, 2000
Reviewer: Harvey Ardman, Rockport, ME USA

Dark Harbor House is like a good dessert--delicious, satisfying and memorable. It is a combination drawing room comedy and coming of age story, set on a Maine island at the end of the 1940s, filled with genuinely funny, touching and believable characters, all of them keenly but gently observed, and written with care and verve. The book takes place in more innocent times than today, and yet there's plenty of delicious "hanky panky," as it was once called, and many other high jinks to smile at. It also features some intriguing background history involving, of all people, three turn-of-the century cereal kings, W. K. Kellogg, C.W. Post, and Dr. Ralston, as well as a pair of beautiful and eccentric female evangelists. If you feel the urge to escape the digital age for a few hours, I can think of no more felicitous way than to lose yourself in Dark Harbor House.

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