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Ghostwalk | 
 enlarge | Author: Rebecca Stott
Publisher: audible.com
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $15.73
You Save: $14.22 (47%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  70 reviews
Media: Audio Download
ASIN: B000QCS2HU
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Product Description
A Cambridge historian, Elizabeth Vogelsang, is found drowned, clutching a glass prism in her hand. The book she was writing about Isaac Newton’s involvement with alchemy—the culmination of her lifelong obsession with the seventeenth century—remains unfinished. When her son, Cameron, asks his former lover, Lydia Brooke, to ghostwrite the missing final chapters of his mother’s book, Lydia agrees and moves into Elizabeth’s house—a studio in an orchard where the light moves restlessly across the walls. Soon Lydia discovers that the shadow of violence that has fallen across present-day Cambridge, which escalates to a series of murders, may have its origins in the troubling evidence that Elizabeth’s research has unearthed. As Lydia becomes ensnared in a dangerous conspiracy that reawakens ghosts of the past, the seventeenth century slowly seeps into the twenty-first, with the city of Cambridge the bridge between them.
Filled with evocative descriptions of Cambridge, past and present, of seventeenth-century glassmaking, alchemy, the Great Plague, and Newton’s scientific innovations, Ghostwalk centers around a real historical mystery that Rebecca Stott has uncovered involving Newton’s alchemy. In it, time and relationships are entangled—the present with the seventeenth century, and figures from the past with the love-torn twenty-first century woman who is trying to discover their secrets. A stunningly original display of scholarship and imagination, and a gripping story of desire and obsession, Ghostwalk is a rare debut that will change the way most of us think about scientific innovation, the force of history, and time itself.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 65 more reviews...
 Ghostwalk October 22, 2008
This is a complex book to read. As stated by others, it isn't a fast read. You'll have to think as you go through it. As a matter of fact I read the first two chapters twice before going on just to be clear about the direction.
Many of the negative reviews regarding this book are from people who only read the first half. Yes, the setup is long, but one has to keep going! For those who aren't sure of the point, you must include the 18, thought provoking, Reader's Points that Ms. Stott includes in the back of the book. This book has so many twists, turns and confusions along the way that I found it fascinating!
I would love to see this written and produced as a screen play - could be very interesting!
 Breaks new ground October 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book breaks new ground in the development of novels. It has elements of historical research, a thriller, a love story, a whodunit, a science fiction, and a ghost story, but it is not typical of any established genre. Its wide-ranging content, drawn from many different fields of intellectual endeavour make it something of an intellectual tour de force.
The story begins with the suspicious death of an author, Elizabeth, who leaves an unfinished book of research into the life of Isaac Newton. The main character, Lydia, takes up residence in Elizabeth's house and sets about completing the book for her. The rest of the book is narrated by Lydia, recounting disturbing discoveries, mysterious events and suspicious deaths, which appear to have sinister implications involving similar suspicious deaths in the 17th Century, and modern animal-rights terrorists.
Some of the narrative consists of Lydia's stream of consciousness, and is mostly written as if addressed to Elizabeth's son, Cameron. It becomes clear that she thinks about him constantly, wistfully, regretfully, as though addressing a deceased person. The story contains ambiguities, as does real life, and these make the story plausible at various levels of realism.
Subtle little doubts are sown here and there about Lydia's sanity, and yet the reader identifies with her in a powerful way. She is intelligent, courageous, resourceful, and honest about her own failings. She is the sort of person a sympathetic reader would fall in love with.
Despite the rich intellectual content, the book is written in a beautifully clear style of simple prose. Sir Edwin Gowers would have loved it. I certainly did.
Similar in feeling to The Thirteenth Tale October 3, 2008
Initially drawn to this book due to its hint of supernatural happenings, I would have enjoyed it even without that aspect.
Only gripes are the unpleasant subject matter about animal experimentation, a major plot point, and the shift at the end towards the age old plot device of the corporate conspiracy.
 Too Boring to Read September 26, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Tho there were some passages I thought were worthwhile in the 100 pages I read, this book was simply too boring to endure. If you want something to put you to sleep, this is the book for you. Non-fiction is much more entertaining than this.
Gorgeous writing but poor execution September 26, 2008
When Lydia Brook learns of the sudden, mysterious drowning of an old mentor, Cambridge scholar Elizabeth Vogelsang, she finds herself pulled into a dark and complicated web spanning a timeframe as wide and as far back the 16th century, and involving the life and career of none other than Sir Isaac Newton.
Elizabeth's son Cameron, with whom Lydia once had a doomed relationship, asks her to temporarily move into Elizabeth's cottage in Cambridge, study her papers and complete a book Elizabeth had been writing about something significant she had apparently discovered about Newton. Lydia doesn't really want to be near Cameron and had left the area several years before specifically to end their relationship, but she has finished her most recent novel and is at loose ends at the moment, and more importantly, she feels she owes it to Elizabeth, who had been an important figure in her life. What Lydia soon realizes is that there may be quite a bit more to Elizabeth's death than anyone imagined, and that it was no accidental drowning that took the scholar's life. In reading through the stash of papers and research Elizabeth left behind, Lydia stumbles onto a dangerous truth: that there are centuries-old secrets and deceptions involving Newton's career and his time at Cambridge that several interested parties wish to remain undiscovered, and yet other parties - not all still living - just as eagerly wish to see full light.
Rebecca Stott is a renowned British historian taking her first stab at fiction, and while the mystery itself is compelling and Stott's language and prose is breathtaking, the whole thing ends up a bit muddled. At the end of the story there is no real conclusion, and I was more confused than when I started. The author's detailed knowledge of 17th century history, and in particular of Newton, alchemy, and the excitement which filled that dawning scientific era, was engaging enough to keep me going, as well as her talent for clever foreshadowing, but as far as I could tell the question at the heart of the mystery is never really answered.
Another big problem for me in reading this is a personal one only and not necessarily a slight on Stott's writing, but it did severely hamper my enjoyment of it. I did NOT like Lydia, the main character. The reason is perhaps a silly one - because she's having an affair with Cameron, who is married (not a spoiler; it's right at the beginning). It's both a moral thing and a respect issue. I have a hard time holding even a marginally good opinion of any woman who would sleep with another woman's husband, and stoop to being some guy's sloppy seconds when she could obviously do better. It made Lydia seem both nastily selfish and annoyingly pathetic, and while I want a few flaws in my protagonists for realism's sake, I want those flaws to be things with which I can empathize.
Stott's use of language is so lovely, however, that even though this debut is a little disappointing, I'd definitely give her another go and would like to see more from her. Definitely great potential and talent here.
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