The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home | 
|  | | | Title: | The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home | | Author: | George Howe Colt | | Publisher: | Scribner | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 01 June, 2004 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 074324964X / 9780743249645 | | List Price: | $14.95 | | You Save: | $4.78 | | Amazon Price: | $10.17 | |
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Product Description
Faced with the sale of the century-old family summer house on Cape Cod where he had spent forty-two summers, George Howe Colt returned for one last stay with his wife and children. This poignant tribute to the eleven-bedroom jumble of gables, bays, and dormers that watched over weddings, divorces, deaths, anniversaries, birthdays, breakdowns, and love affairs for five generations interweaves Colt's final visit with memories of a lifetime of summers. Run-down yet romantic, the Big House stands not only as a cherished reminder of summer's ephemeral pleasures but also as a powerful symbol of a vanishing way of life.
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Customer Reviews:
• From The Gilded Age To The Golden Arches 29 January, 2008
The Big House and The Hidden House are two summer homes on the Atkinson/Colt ancestral property at Buzzard's Bay on Cape Cod. Similarly, author George Colt Howe offers us two stories within one book: First, a magnificent tale of life at that big family summer retreat on Cape Cod and its evolvement over the last century. Second, a stupefying slog through five generations of Boston Brahmin lore. In a nutshell, great granddad was the nineteenth century patriarch who bankrolled the good life for four generations. Hitting tennis balls and winning sailing pennants preoccupied the lives of his progeny, no one else worked too hard. Fortunately, every other generation, an industrious grandson-in-law shows up to keep the home in the family.
The story of the house, and the author's emotional attachment to it, is colorful and endearing. Howe writes with painstaking love for special nooks and crannies of the Big House, of magical childhood memories, and the traditions he wishes he could afford to pass on to his own children. Readers with a longtime family residence, summer home or other special place held dear in their hearts will connect with this author. His descriptions of 'old Cape Cod' chronicle a bygone pre-fastfood era when the Cape was truly an isolated getaway.
You can't blame Howe for the dullness of reading about rich dead white guys who were his forebears. His editors failed him. Skim the genealogy, don't worry about who was who's granduncle or aunt. We could have had more specifics about the patriarch Ned Atkinson, and far less about his descendants. It's always the relatives who spoil a summer vacation.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1XL0V4IAXXSRP
• Big House, Small Story 08 February, 2008
Lots of padding in this book. Hard to read as it was only mildly interesting. It just scraped in for a 3 star rating.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A26ZUUX9RXZ6TX
• The Big House 17 March, 2008
I enjoyed reading "The Big House" and have recomended it to several friends. Anyone in the Boston and Cape Cod area or enjoyed summer vacations on the cape would enjoy the book, I highly recommend. I purchased this book from a review, and because it is a true story about real people and an area I have visited. It covered facets of my life. It told how the family used the house and each generation was interested in the previous generations, from the relative that build the house to the present time. It is a good read.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1HOS90QEEP9UZ
• Heartbreaking 31 March, 2008
I'm on p. 199, reading this in Tel Aviv while keeping my ill sister-in-law company (I'm from California). I have lived every page, every lush detail, and now it's becoming so heartbreakingly sad. I'm in a foreign culture, reading about another very different foreign culture (Boston Brahmins), and reading this book helps me to understand BOTH better.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3DXKR0XPYYSRK
• The Big House Review 22 October, 2007
This book was recommmended to me by someone who had read it, so i knew what to expect, a very well researched history of a family and the intertwined relationship of the family as it grew over the generations to the big house that was their common home away from home. The writing was excelllent which made it very easy to relate to the characters that we met and got to know. The stories of the individuals was realistic and punches were not pulled in several of the histories, which made me at times believe that I was reading fiction. When the time came to part with the old home, I was as devastated as George Colt (author) was, I felt so part of the story. A good read.
- Reviewed by customer ID: AF5TUGVJ2Z86A
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