Changes

|title=The Hundred-Year House

|sort=Hundred-Year House, The

|publisher=William Heinemann

|date=July 2014

|website=http://rebeccamakkai.com/

|video=qSwnoeyPJC4

|summary=In a postmodern take on two classic genres, the country house novel and the ghost story, Makkai traces – backwards – the story of a Chicago-area house, once an artists' colony, throughout the twentieth century. A most unusual novel, but it works brilliantly.

}}

The first thing you'll notice about this novel is that, like a crazy house, it's upside-down. That is: it opens in 1999, that near-contemporary storyline taking up about half the text; follows it with sections set in 1955 and 1929; and finishes with a 'prologue' set in 1900. The second thing to jump out is that this is a ghost story – or is it? The first line is both declaration and qualification: 'For a ghost story, the tale of Violet Saville Devohr was vague and underwhelming.'