Penmarric

Penmarric is a novel by the English writer Susan Howatch, published by Simon and Schuster in 1971. It is set in Cornwall and follows one family across three generations, from the late nineteenth century into the years after the First World War.

The house of the title is a mansion on a stretch of Cornish coast, and the novel begins when Mark Castallack brings his bride, Janna, to live there. Mark is proud, strange and sensitive, and the marriage he begins in those first pages sets off a conflict that runs through the family he and Janna create: children who take sides, property divided against affection, and old resentments handed down along with the estate.

Howatch tells the family's story through the changing voices of its members, so the reader meets the same events from more than one side as the generations take turns at the centre of the book. The house, its land and the question of who will inherit them remain the constant through the quarrels, the marriages and the war years.