"The Big House"

My friend Mary recommended a wonderful book I have just finished reading: "The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home" (Scribner, 2003), by George Howe Colt. Thank you, Mary! The book is bursting with so many ideas, so much lovely description, and so much feeling that a paragraph on this blog can't possibly do justice to it. Although I am a very happy longtime resident of the West Coast, I have always been fascinated with the East Coast, especially New England, and the very words "Cape Cod" elicit all sorts of images and feelings. So I couldn't help but be enchanted by this depiction of a family's long history of several generations' spending summers at a huge, ramshackle, delightful old house on Cape Cod, eating meals around the big table, swimming, fishing, sailing, playing tennis, drinking, and talking, in the midst of old furniture, photos and family memories. The author is also realistic in acknowledging family problems, illnesses, and estrangements over the years. But the predominant impressions are of family, love, tradition, and continuity. The issue of social class privilege hovers over the book as well; the author deals with it head on, and the truth regarding this issue is more complicated than one might think. My very favorite part of the book, as Mary predicted, was the evocative description of the thousands of books scattered throughout the house, accumulated over decades, and of the pleasures of curling up and reading in various rooms in the house. If you can get access to a copy of this book, and if you read nothing else, do read pages 230-236, all about books and reading in the Big House.