Ashenden by Elizabeth Wilhide
(Penguin $37)
"Houses have their own ways of dying," wrote E.M. Forster, "some with a tragic roar, some quietly." Ashenden Park, the honey-stoned Palladian villa at the heart of Elizabeth Wilhide's debut novel, however, seems to enjoy many lives, always brought back from the brink by a fresh lick of paint or new plumbing.
When Charlie Minton, a middle-aged photojournalist, is left the eponymous house by an ancient aunt, he's keen to sell. But his sister, Ros, ignoring the "blooms" of decay and "stone teeth missing under the roofline", has other plans.
From this starting point Wilhide, a writer on architecture and interior design, embarks on a series of historical vignettes relating the history of Ashenden through the eyes of the people who have lived and loved within its human-scaled walls.
Country house dramas tend to be constructed around the travails of one particular escutcheoned clan.