Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN num: 9780060934644
ISBN number: 0060934646
Label: Harper Perennial
Manufacturer: Harper Perennial
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 432
Printing Date: October 01, 2001
Publishing house: Harper Perennial
Release Date: October 02, 2001
Sale Popularity Level: 1013285
Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Meet Edward Rollins, scion of one of Boston's more notable families. A diligent but uninspired employee at one of the city's finest investment houses, he is a man of means -- and of secrets. Each night, armed with a hand-held tape recorder, he randomly picks a car and follows it to a destination, cataloging the habits and peculiarities of its driver. A harmless obsession.
But one night changes everything. Trailing a car to a remote suburb, Rollins follows it to a house that, he eerily realizes, was once frequented by his murdered cousin. Drawn into a mystery to which he unwittingly holds the key, he must unlock the secrets of his past to find the truth -- a search that could free him from his own dark house of despair.
A harrowing, tension-riddled literary thriller that echoes the storytelling power of Frederick Busch and Ian McEwan, The Dark House heralds the arrival of a major talent.
Amazon.com Review:
Edward Rollins, a blue-blooded, moderately successful, diligent employee of a small Boston investment firm, is a voyeur's voyeur. He spends his nights drifting through Boston's suburbs, playing a surreal game of cat-and-mouse. He picks cars at random and follows them, all for a few words muttered into an ever-present recorder, a few moments outside the car's final destination, a brief glimpse into a life. 'With his night work he was a vacancy, a being without substance or history, drifting through other people's lives. He was nothing to the people he watched. He didn't have to worry about what they might think of him, because they would never think anything of him.' But the pathologically repressed Rollins's greatest fear is that he will somehow lose his uninvolved perspective. What would happen if he left 'a bit of himself in that car, that house, that life? Instead of him owning it, it might own him. He might become part of the scene he'd meant only to witness.' He's about to discover the Heisenberg uncertainty principle: if you watch, you affect--and are affected.
A chance pursuit draws him into his own past. His prey takes him to a house once owned by his cousin, Cornelia Blanchard. Rollins idolized Cornelia as a child, and her disappearance 10 years ago nearly destroyed him. Caught in a web of seeming coincidence, Rollins enlists the aid of a colleague Marj (best described as neurotically plucky) to uncover the truth about his cousin's disappearance and about the long-held secrets of his particularly dysfunctional family.
Readers may become impatient with Rollins's endlessly self-absorbed fretting (his soliloquies on solitude are tedious at best), and with author John Sedgwick's careless tendency to leave loose ends dangling. But the tantalizing glimpses into Rollins's past, and his desperate efforts to reconcile that past with an unnerving present, offer enough to keep the pages turning. As a very first effort, The Dark House does its job in a workmanlike fashion: its faults aren't glaring, and readers should look forward to Sedgwick's subsequent novel. --Kelly Flynn
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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This book starts off well, showing promise of being a good story. The
principal character is Edward Rollins. Rollins is a strange duck indeed.
He is a reasonably well-employed loner whose obsession is following cars
he chooses randomly to see where their drivers are going. He keeps records of what he observes. Rollins hooks up with "Marj," a woman who has problems of her own. They share adventures.
Relatively soon after the book begins, the reader begins to sense that the story isn't going to be anything special. This reader seeks good murder mysteries but often settles for less because he works at a job that is sedentary and often boring, but offers lots of time to read as a way to make the work tolerable. Author Sedgwick's writing style is quite good even if the story "Dark House" is nothing special. The story has lots of twists and turns and has enough attraction to have caused me to read it through even though I soon knew that it wouldn't be a prize winner.
The only way I'd pay money for this book is if I found it offered at a yard sale or library castoff sale priced at not more than one dollar.
Rated by buyers 
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Sedgwick's character is a perverted boring loser. Worst book I've ever read--well, almost read. Talentless. End of story.
Rated by buyers 
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This is a highly original and unpredictable suspense novel, totally unlike anything I'd read before. Let's start with the premise: the protagonist has a peculiar hobby -- he follows people as they drive home. The plot flows very smoothly from there and drifts into an older murder in which the protagonist's family was intimately involved. Just excellent -- and it's his very first book!
Rated by buyers -
Did I love this book? No, but it certainly kept me up past my usual bedtime for a few nights trying to read another page because, no matter how predictable or coincidental the plot sometimes seemed, the story was voyeuristically compelling and rarely boring. I'd recommend it to anyone who appreciates a fresh mystery (although I kept thinking of David Lynch's Blue Velvet, especially early on). The characters were pretty well drawn and I rarely wondered what their motivation was, which I think is key to this type of novel. Don't expect The Dark House to win any literary awards, but don't be surprised if the person on the beach subsequent to you this summer gets sunburned because they don't want to stop reading long enough to put on sunblock.
Rated by buyers -
The Dark House takes you on the ride of your life. Starting out with the main character Edward Rollins, a damaged soul, riding in his car, following random people to their homes and ending with a building strength and catharsis of Rollins, this book is extremely well written. Rollins definitely has problems, but as the reader starts viewing him as psychologically damaged by his circumstances, he becomes less and less screwed up---and more of a classic protagonist. In The Dark House everything has a reason as well as a connection to the story. If I didn't enjoy it so much I would have been put off by some of the coincidences found in the plot (but NO LOOSE ENDS in this work). The writing was excellent, plot intense, while the scenes and individuals were interesting and stimulating.
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