AustLit

' Shortlisted, National Book Council 'Banjo' Award 1996 Shortlisted, Fantasy Division and Horror Division, Aurealis Awards for Excellence in Australian Speculative Fiction 1995 a vivid and engrossing novel. Patricia Rolfe, Bulletin Brooks's first novel is haunting, a work of precision and delicacy, enigma and exactness. Philippa Hawker, Marie Claire brings to mind the house in Tim Winton's Cloudstreet...Resonating with lost emotional energy, sighing and sobbing to itself in the echoing silences of the night. Ian McFarlane, Canberra Times The House Of Balthus is a magical novel which has the intensity of a dream. Characters from the artist Balthus' paintings walk out of the canvas and take on a life of their own, sharing the spaces of an ancient chateau now turned apartment block in a large French provincial town. The concierge Mme Lecault watches closely her tenants, among them the Countess, the Professor, the Painter, Therese and her young lover Michael - but knows only the surface of their lives. She spends her sleepless nights talking to Mme Berry, who lives, it would appear, in another century. There is a sound of sobbing, which echoes between rooms and across.' (Publication summary)