The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home

The Big House is so many things, evokes so many feelings and alerts all of your senses. I have never really felt compelled to write a review online for anything, but when I finished The Big House, I wanted everyone to experience what I felt. First of all, it's a great summer read because it's about summers on Cape Cod in a fantastic old house. But it's also a fabulous history of a family from the turn of the century to the present. It takes you back to a different era. This writer takes you through every part of this amazing house and the path down to the water. You can feel it, you can smell it and you can hear the wind blow! It reminded me of many summers at the beach with my family and even though it wasn't on Cape Cod, there were so many similarities. You can see the worn decks of cards in the drawer and the old Monopoly games, you can smell the muffins in the kitchen, you can even picture the photographs on the walls and see the old books in the bookcases...I can't say enough good things about this book. It's a book that I didn't want to end...and yet I needed to finish to see what happens to the house. George Howe Colt is a very gifted writer. You have to read this!

"The Big House" is a big piece of work by George Howe Colt. For a century, "The Big House," an eleven bedroom architectural gem on Cape Cod, has been in the Atkinson/Colt family. At the start of the book, Colt describes taking his young family to the house for what may be the last summer. Alas, the extended family can no longer afford to keep the home and it must be sold.The house has served as a center of gravity for this family, a place which pulls them back each summer to live out graceful and simple Boston Brahim traditions. The house also serves as a metaphor for the fading fortunes of this once wealthy, once socially prominent family whose entire caste-the Brahmins of Boston--has become irrelevant. Through the prism of the house and its meaning to his family, Colt also delves into his family's history of mental illness, of marriages that become estranged, of boys that start out as golden children and end up tarnished old men. He also recounts his own story. He began his adult life as a young Brahmin with disdain for his heritage. Now in mid-life and a New Yorker, he is deeply proud of the many traits (e.g., thrift, reverence for family) bred deep in his bones. I would recommend this book to those who gravitate towards serious memoirs and thoughtful accounts of profound issues (e.g., meaning of family). It is a beautiful read.

This is a marvelous book. It is not just the story of a summer house, and of the family that owned it for it's first hundred years, It is a book about what Aristocracy means, about letting go, about accepting oblivion.There is only one draw back to the book : No maps, No family tree, No photographs. The maps you can buy, the family tree you can draw yourself as you read the book, but you need the photographs. Especially when there are so many descriptions of photos in the book.I suggest the publishing of a new " Special Edition" of the book, with reproductions of the original blueprint for The Big House, and photos of it and the successive generations of Forbes-Atkinsons- Colts -Singers who summered in it.

If you've ever spotted a big old romantic looking house and wondered what it was like to live there, this is your book. You'll never have a better guide than George Howe Colt. Here is the way he takes you on your first step through the front door of his family's 100-year-old summer mansion: "Inside, we are enveloped by an unmistakable smell, one that might be difficult for even the most expert chemist to break down, but that seems to be composed in various measures, of salt, wind, dust, sunlight, moonlight, sand, pine, mildew, mothballs, leather, old books, disintegrating bricks, and dead bluebottle flies. It is a smell so evocative and precious, so irresistibly redolent of both life and decay, that I wonder why it has never been bottled and sold as perfume."We follow him into 19 rooms, into secret passages, under eaves, into forgotten spaces, down to the beach and out into the harbor. We follow him into pictures of ancestors and relive the building of the house and the wonderful summer vacations of delicious leisure. It was an eye-opener for me to learn just how well Boston Brahmins loosened up in a family environment and laughed at themselves. One hostess, for instance, insisted everyone wear shoes for Sunday dinners, but did not care whose shoes you wore and kept a pile of them outside the dining room for your convenience. You might see a woman in a 30 year-old pink evening gown -- and keds.Once you've heard the wind in the rafters, felt the clam shells and gravel under your toes, raced the sailboat, and dreamed under the stars you're ready for the tales of family troubles. In one of the most splendid passages in the book Colt pays homage to parents who almost divorced, but didn't -- and the role of a large family pulling together to survive as family left me deep in thought.I join the chorus of those who are saying, "Don't miss it!"DON'T MISS IT!!!

The Big House on Cape Cod was built more than a century ago by the author's great-grandfather. It weathered 2 world wars, joy and tragedy, the changing seasons and fortunes of two families, and the transition from the simpler life-styles of past times to our own modern `very fast is still too slow' culture. When the house becomes financially untenable for family members to maintain, Colt returns for one last visit before it goes on sale...and there the story, a touching and wistful memoir, begins. Don't miss this lovely book.