Review: More Than You Know by Beth Gutcheon

Review by DivaBetty

Rating: Five strips of bacon. Practically perfect.
Plot Summary: Elderly Hannah tells the story of her passionate, doomed romance with Conary Crocker in her youth. Hannah Grey goes to Dundee, Maine for the summer with her hateful stepmother, Edith, and half-brother Stephen. In their rented lodgings, Hannah hears weeping and begins seeing a black shrouded figure that appears only to her. The unhappy seventeen year old crosses paths with rebellious Conary who fills her in on the century-old murder that happened on nearby Beal Island. Together they uncover the true story behind the crime that led to mild-mannered schoolteacher Sallie Haskell’s conviction as an ax-murderer and discover that Conary can see the ghost as well. Forbidden to see each other by snobby Edith, the two must keep their passionate romance hidden. Thanks to the ghost and her unfinished business, however, their idyllic love is doomed to end in tragedy.
Review: Love the book. Unforgettable. Ah, let me count the ways

The Intriguing Opener: “Somebody said, ‘True Love is like ghosts, which everybody talks about and few have seen.’ I have seen both and I don’t know how to tell you which is worse.”
The Narrator: Hannah’s voice is clear and rueful, so crystalline and painfully true that the scary bits with the malevolent ghost rattled me as though I were there. The narration is so excellent that I find myself wanting to quote long passages of it in the review. The prose is gorgeous and austere and Hannah is stubborn, lonely, and raw. She chops her hair off at the barber shop back when the only women with short hair were psychiatric patients, she insists that the ghost is real despite skeptical Edith’s ridicule, and she knows that Conary is a kindred soul who belongs with her despite anyone’s objections.

The Guy: Handsome, troubled Conary is the town rebel, a berry raker trying to support his younger sister and their drunken father. Sincere, passionate, and breathtaking--he throws blueberries at her window late one night, leaves messages for her in a copy of Dickens at the library--the perfect first love.

The Romance: Swoon. Honestly, I have lent this to many people from colleagues and friends to my grandma and each has remarked how incredibly romantic it is and how real and thus how excruciating at times. My husband and I read passages to each other over the phone during our courtship and quote lines of it that capture intimacy and hope like no other. Practically nothing melts my heart like him turning to look over his shoulder at me and raising an eyebrow and saying, “Do I look like a potato farmer to you?”, to which the correct response is a breathless, “Why not?” Trust me. Extremely romantic.

The Villain: is so immensely hateable that no one including my own grandmother felt that he didn’t deserve to be murdered long before he was. The principle reason I persuaded then-boyfriend to read it was because he had confided his dream of naming a son Daniel Marino after legendary Dolphins qb Dan Marino. Well, hell no to that. So I smuggled him the novel with cowardly, oppressive, cruel Danial Haskell to ruin it for him. It worked. He called me late one night and said, “Now I could never name anything Daniel this is horrible why isn’t he dead yet?” (Grins mischievously)

The Ghost: Equally hateable. Vindictive and soulless, she roams Dundee looking for ways to cause Hannah pain in an effort, presumably, to “save” her from a similar fate. I confess she scared the living daylights out of me. When she rocks in the rocking chair by Hannah’s bed, scuttles across the floor on all fours with the black hollows where her eyes should be and seems bent on driving Hannah insane, I clutched at the covers on my bed and darted unsettled glances at the shadows in the corner.

Disclaimer: It’s searing and will make you cry. Don’t get it from the library because you will feel compelled to underline passages and repeat them aloud because the writing itself is luminous.