Kit is waiting expectantly for life to begin. Orphaned as a young child, he recoils from his adoptive parents’ mundane existence, drawn instead to the bohemian world of his Uncle Col and Col’s charismatic wife Marianne. Amid the permissive atmosphere of Erringby, Marianne’s rambling family mansion, Kit becomes increasingly obsessed with his aunt. One debauched summer, the eighteen-year-old Kit wakes to find himself in bed with Marianne. But what happened? And who is his sudden mysterious benefactor? As Kit grapples with the ramifications of that night, he, Marianne and Col find their lives spiralling out of control. Unfolding against the changing cultural landscape of the seventies, eighties and nineties, Erringby is a captivating coming-of-age novel with echoes of Great Expectations.

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The premise and the cover are just stunning. When I read the book, I just can't and it feel flat for me. The problem is me, many people enjoys this book just fine. I just can't...
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for eARC!

I loved this book and the writing. It's very character-driven, and the character is very endearing, so it worked out really well. It's a historical trip to this mansion with beautiful writing that I enjoyed a lot. Defiitely recommended.

The title Erringby refers to a large decaying country pile which is inherited by Marianne, a young and beautiful aspiring actress. After quickly tiring of the commune Marianne has created she meets and marries Col and welcomes his nephew Christopher into the house when Christopher’s mother is in hospital. Christopher is beguiled by Marianne and strongly influenced and guided by her as he grows up. But as Christopher comes of age (and changes his name to Kit) the dysfunctional and maligned family dynamics and games begin to have a devastating effect on Col and Kit.

Gill Darling sets the scenes of the crumbling country estate through the decades beautifully. The story takes in the 70s, 80s and 90s and encapsulates these time periods so well. The characters are all so vivid and engaging, the book pulls you immediately. But it lulled me in one direction and I really didn’t see how dark the psychological drama would become. As layers are peeled away you see the characters destruction of themselves and each other come to the fore.

I found it a fascinating and dark study of control and malice within a family dynamic. It also portrays (brilliantly) an entitlement that those of inherited wealth and privilege have to manipulate and control and play the puppet master almost like an hommage to the Greek Gods they probably learnt about in their Private Schools. The character of Marianne and her motivations certainly keep this gripping until the end.

If you like novels that have dark twisted family secrets and lies that destroy most of the characters then I can’t recommend this highly enough. I certainly loved it.

Thank you to #netgalley and Fairlight Books for the ebook in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this daring, challenging, page-turning book. Interesting characters, uncomfortable themes, but all welded together with confidence and dexterity. Brilliant.

Beautifully written and an engaging read. The characters were wonderfully drawn and I was immediately sucked into the story. I would recommend Erringby to anyone.

Not at all what I was expecting, in the least, from the cover and blurb. I liked this a lot, but I couldn’t get over how different it was from my own expectations.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC! There was more to this story than met the eye. For the first third, I wasn't much invested in the characters, and the English manor draw of the plot had dried up a little. But the latter half of the book gave me more to think about, focusing as it did on the character of Kit and his intersection with Marianne and Col.

I usually read a book in one setting or two at most but for do.e reason it took a while for me to get through this one. Even though I found it interesting it dragged after a while. The characters were fully fleshed out and Kit was especially likable. I also enjoyed the covering of past decades which have the story more realism. The ending was.perfect! I loved it!
Thank you Net Galley for allowing me to read this incredible ARC for my honest review.

For a novel which centres around a 19th Century stately home, it's extremely rock and roll, but ultimately very moving. Whilst the intimate scenes are almost as frequent as Diana Gabaldon's Outlander, this is very much a work of literary fiction, whose characters scream out to be televised. What makes Gill Darling’s third person narrative so masterful is her ability to conjure increasingly distant decades (the '70s, '80s, and '90s) in a way that feels fresh, relatable, and at some points hilarious, particularly when Erringby is used as a film set and later visited by fans of the resulting "cult movie".

Dubbed as a reimagining of Great Expectations, it takes a while to see quite how this is going to manifest. Christopher Antrobus, an apparently orphaned young boy, metamorphoses into narcissistic yet somehow loveable It Boy, Kit Dashwood (a moniker which he borrows from Austen's Sense and Sensibility). He is Phillip Pirrip X Dorian Gray, a memorable character in his own right and brought sashaying into the nineteen-eighties to feature in the glossies and, purportedly, a Bowie video. His heady lifestyle does eventually peter out, as he is forced to face up to his flaws and the true facts of his provenance. By the end, we are hopeful for Kit's chance at a happy ending, and - like Dickens - Darling gives us just the right fit.

While the writing style is intriguing enough, the characters from the very beginning were unlikeable and grated on my nerves. Their inner monologues made me uncomfortable and I DNFed this book

Wow, Erringby is one of those books that I know will stay with me and has joined a select list of my favourite novels! I knew from the snappy and intriguing prologue that I was going to enjoy it, and my attention was sustained throughout to the last chapter, which left me with tears in my eyes and feeling somewhat bereft.
The story follows Kit from his orphaned childhood through several decades, charting his childhood in the 70’s with his adoptive parents, his transformation (after a mystery bequest on his coming of age) into a prominent cosmopolitan celebrity in London’s high fashion scene, and then into the 90's as his glamorous life starts to fall apart and he descends into addiction and depression. Central to the story is his evolving relationship with his charismatic aunt and uncle who live in a vast crumbling mansion – the Erringby of the title, and his strained relationship with his adoptive parents. The characters and their interrelationships are complex and very believable; I found that I really cared about Kit, despite him becoming unpleasant and quite unlikeable at some points in his life - perhaps the fact that we had known him from childhood allowed us to accept his flaws? There are echoes of Great Expectations throughout, but Erringby is much more than a simple retelling, and there is no need to be a fan of Dickens' novel to enjoy it, (although knowledge of that story does add an additional level of interest - who will turn out to be Kit's mystery benefactor?)
I thoroughly enjoyed Erringby and found opportunities to read it in any spare moment.  This is an impressively accomplished first novel by Gill Darling that would not look out of place in lists of literary prize contenders; I would not be at all surprised to see it nominated this year!

An excellent, maddening, character-driven novel.

Everyone in this book is grasping for control-- lying and manipulating those around them to get it. The lack of tangible love in this book is underscored by the overabundance of physical relationships almost completely devoid of real emotion. The contrast of lust and love couldn't be more apparent, each of these characters is addicted to a wickedness that is slowly consuming them, and those around them. It's dark and twisted, but I couldn't put it down. You know these characters only make horrible choices, but you can't help but want to watch it all unfold and hope they finally get it right.

This book pushes the boundaries of what some people may be comfortable reading, but that made me love it even more. You're left wondering who is really at fault for it all, and to what extent you get to blame others for the way your own life turned out. The plot twist at the end sealed my admiration for this book and all it accomplishes in character development and story-telling. Exceptionally well written.

Thank you so much to Fairlight Books and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

I absolutely love this trip into the past to meandering mansion with a main character it’s full of life. Beautiful prose, I highly recommend this book