Arcadia Falls

Narrator Jen Taylor offers a wry, warm portrayal of Meg Rosenthal, recently widowed mom. Narrator Jen Taylor's talent is obvious in the first conversation between Meg and her petulant teenage daughter, Sally. It's truly astonishing that one person voices both characters. Taylor also brings to life the various denizens of the arty Arcadia School, where Meg has come to teach. Particularly strong is her portrayal of the enigmatic headmistress, Ivy St. Clare. As Meg unearths the secrets of the school's sordid history, Goodman deftly explores the conflicts involved in being both an artist and a mother. F.J.K. (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

November 9, 2009
Goodman (The Night Villa
) delivers the goods her fans expect in this atmospheric and fast-moving gothic story: buried secrets, supernatural elements, and a creepy setting. Following the death of her husband, Meg Rosenthal accepts a job teaching at an upstate New York boarding school and moves there with her teenage daughter, Sally. The school, Arcadia Falls, also happens to be central to her thesis, which focuses on the two female coauthors of fairy tales: Vera Beecher, who founded the school, and her friend Lily Eberhardt, who died mysteriously in 1947. While the campus is bucolic, school life proves anything but—Meg thinks she sees ghosts and Arcadia’s brightest and most ambitious student, Isabel Cheney, is found dead in a ravine. Feeling Sally drifting further from her each day, Meg finds refuge in Lily’s preserved diary and begins to unravel the secrets behind Isabel’s death. Goodman doesn’t do anything new, but her storytelling is as solid as ever, and the book is reliably entertaining.