The House at the Edge of Night

Praise

“Banner’s four-generation saga is set on an island near Sicily, where myths of saints get served up with limoncello as the Esposito family’s bar. As the captivating characters are challenged by war, financial crisis and heartbreak, their bonds hold them together. The island is fictional, but consider this dreamy summer read your passport.”—People

“Like pictures of a childhood summer, or a half-forgotten smell, this book is sweet and heady with nostalgia; not radical, maybe, but comforting as a quilt.”—NPR

“A gorgeous, sweeping story set over four generations . . . The novel calls to mind Captain Corelli’s Mandolin and Beautiful Ruins. It is not just the protagonists and their struggles that make Banner’s narrative incredible, but also the smaller, secondary characters that add color and detail, and the intricately described island of Castellamare itself.”—Interview

“Rich and immersive, this book will take you away.”—Vox.com

“In a luminous homage to the Italian tradition of storytelling, Catherine Banner’s second novel is a lusty page-turner that weaves romance, rivalry and the intricacies of family expectations into one glorious tale. . . . There are echoes of Italo Calvino in Banner’s writing—echoes of admiration and love. Reading The House at the Edge of Night is like falling into a fantastical world where time stands still, yet change happens at an unimaginable pace.”—Star-Tribune

“[Banner’s] touch is light and her style accommodates both the foibles and magical thinking of Castellamare’s more curious inhabitants and the subtler moments of happiness and heartbreak her main characters experience across several generations.”—The Dallas Morning News

“A perfect summer read, made for those balmy evenings on your porch with a glass of wine. . . . The story brims with heart, dreamy folk tales and beautifully written passages about the people who call the island home. . . . Just don’t be surprised if you keep turning the pages long into the night, spellbound by its magic.”—The Denver Post

“A fantastic Italian escape . . . So fine-tuned are the historic events within [The House at the Edge of Night] that one almost forgets that Castellamare doesn’t actually exist. Just like the characters, the reader is torn between the romance of island life and the world beyond.”—BookPage

“This knockout adult debut by young British author Banner is guaranteed to draw comparisons to Beautiful Ruins, Cutting for Stone, and The House of the Spirits, whisking us away to a world grounded in both reality and myth, filled with marvelously peculiar characters, plotted on a grand scale.”—Kirkus Reviews

“[The House at the Edge of Night] has a touch of magical realism that filters down from the island’s many legends. . . . Banner deftly touches on weightier themes while weaving an enchanting narrative.”—Publishers Weekly

“Catherine Banner’s latest is a masterful piece of storytelling, infused with the miraculous (both in stories and in everyday life) while maintaining the difficult balance between the explainable versus the inexplicable. Through the life of a single man—a man not noteworthy in the eyes of the world—and his family, Banner touches on such broad themes as community and the way global events play out in individual lives and larger society. And just as the broader themes affect the more personal ones, Banner’s style echoes the book’s content: The House at the Edge of Night is captivating and beautifully rendered.”—Sara Gruen, author of At the Water’s Edge

“My admiration for The House at the Edge of Night is boundless. Catherine Banner’s writing is preternaturally mature, distinct, clear, and strikingly beautiful. As I read on, I felt the resonance of classic legend and myth, the stuff of Homer, building around this world that is timeless yet utterly its own. . . . A gorgeous, deeply moving novel of life across a sweep of time and generations.”—Peter Nichols, author of The Rocks

“To the long, eclectic tradition of the island novel, The House at the Edge of Night is a sparkling addition. Catherine Banner has created a vast world unto itself of the fictional island of Castellamare, intricately compressed and marvelously textured—a feat reserved for the most ingenious and intuitive of writers. That this is Catherine Banner’s first adult novel makes it all the more remarkable.”—Nicholas Christopher, author of A Trip to the Stars