Excellent story! Curry is one of the authors I keep forgetting about, and then rediscovering with yet another great book. Roger is great - the child forced to be the responsible one, and not allowing himself to trust that maybe they've got a family (his father recently married, a woman with a daughter) that will last. He's putting his hopes on a house his father just inherited...which turns out to be something rather amazing, under a _lot_ of crud, and with...complications. Shakesperean ghosts - with echoes in current time, Roger's father is also an actor and currently doing Hamlet. A complicated mystery that gets solved in dreams that aren't dreams... Very solid and complicated characters, in both times, and a lovely (and perfectly reasonable) assortment of bits of evidence of what happened back then. I found it particularly delightful because I lived in the area for a while, and a lot of the territory they cover (frequently on foot) is at least vaguely familiar to me. The unspooling at the end is a lovely way of fixing things. A great book, and now I want to read more of hers. ( )

From the inside cover of the Atheneum 1977 edition:

When the Nicholas family first saw the derelict old house near London that had been left to them in Aunt Deb's will, the were sadly disappointed. Thirteen-year-old Roger's disapointment was the greatest, since, having moved from place to place all his life with his gifted actor-father, he longed for some measure of stability. Then Roger and his father discovered under peeling wallpaper and rotte paneling traces of a much older, more graceful house, and their misgivings disappeared--until, that night, the old house was filled with a sound of wild grieving that Roger traced to an empty room.

Only Roger--and later his small stepsister Pippa--saw the ghosts, among them that of Tom Garland, a well-known actor in Shakespeare's time. But Roger's father, playing Hamlet in a famous London theater, was caught up, unknowing, in Tom's old tragedy. It was Roger who had to find a way to mend the past before the present should become its tragic echo.

Dramatic, wholly convincing, a fascinating intermingling of the centuries, this highly original story portrays a modern family whose bonds are tested and strengthened by a threat from the past. ----

I'd have adored this book as a child! One of Curry's best. For lovers of English history, drama, Shakespeare, COOL old houses, mystery, England, and GHOSTS. ( )