The Lantern Group Read: Part 5 & Wrap-up

It's the end of our group read of The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson. I actually finished reading it over a week ago so I'm glad to finally be wrapping this up. Heather of Capricious Reader wrote up our questions for this week.

(End of book questions mean, obviously, SPOILERS. Don't read if this is a book you're interested in. Just read the book!)

1. Now that it's all said and done; what did you think of the book? Did you see the ending coming?

The story line with Dom and Eve pretty much wrapped up the way I thought it would. It was kind of anti-climactic. Although I was surprised that they had a kid and stayed in the house. I actually liked that bit. The Benedicte story line was more interesting with the medical condition and her having lived with Sabine's family. I liked too that they eventually found the recordings of Benedicte's story and found out the truth about everything.

2. What do you think of the characters? Lawrenson took us on a twisty little ride there, I had trouble deciding who was good and who wasn't for a while there! What do you think of Dom? Of Sabine? Rachel?

I think the only one who turned out to be better than I thought was Sabine. She had a reason behind what she was doing though I'm not quite sure why she was so sneaky and mean about it. Maybe she was just French. I saw everything coming with Rachel and Dom because of the parallels to Rebecca.

3. Pierre was such a conflicted character. In the end, do you think he killed Marthe and Annette, or did the fall to their deaths because of their blindness?

Well, they both ended up with trauma to the back of the skull. I don't think they both happened to do that falling. Plus, he lied about Marthe going back to Paris and eventually faked his own death and disappeared. If he wasn't guilty about something, he would definitely have still tried to get his portion of the estate. He was just a bad man.

4. The book is being compared to Rebecca and Daphne du Maurier's writing. Do you think the book lives up to that description?

I think the connections to Rebecca were obvious but I think that the book suffered a bit from that. The writing was not of the same level as du Maurier's and the story wasn't quite as tight and compelling as Rebecca. I just think it's really hard to emulate a true classic. I think I would have enjoyed this book more if I wasn't such a big fan of Rebecca already.

5. Did you have any problems with the book? Narration? Plot? The back and forth between two different characters and times?

Any problems I had at the beginning seemed to work themselves out by the end.

6. Do you think Lawrenson tied both stories together well in the end? Is there anything she could/should have done differently?

I think the stories never really tied together. Rather, they both happened around the same house and so it's the house's history but I don't think the Benedicte/Marthe/Pierre story truly affected Eve and Dom's life at all.

7. One problem I had with the novel is the reliability of the narrators. Do you think any of them were telling the truth? Which ones?

I think that Eve was the only one who was telling us things that weren't true and that was just because she was stupid and weak. Benedicte was telling things in a round-about way and from her own point of view but she never told us anything that wasn't, from her perspective, the truth. But there were a lot of lies of omission and mistaken ideas in the story.

This was a really fun group read! Thanks to Carl, Kailana and Heather for the thought-provoking questions and the idea to run this in the first place.

Closing the book,

K