Unworkers

by Lynette Sofras

Chichester Court should be a safe place, a refuge for lone mothers and their children. But for five women and their offspring it becomes a house of terror. Strange and disturbing dreams; voices urging unspeakable acts and bizarre and alarming events affect them all.

The strange happenings at the Georgian mansion are not confined solely to the young women. The children are also at the mercy of the forces in the house - watched over by a woman in grey who is not one of the residents.

There is an atmosphere of old evil in Chichester Court and it is not a safe place to be. Not safe at all.

Unknown Binding

Published June 22, 2013

About the author

A former teacher, Lynette gave up her career in education a few years ago in order to focus on her writing and thus fulfill her childhood dream. She writes contemporary women's fiction, often involving romance with suspense or a supernatural twist. She claims 'Killing Jenna Crane', a romantic thriller and 'Unworkers' a modern ghost story/women's fiction are her personal favorites to date. Her recent release 'The Nightclub' is a romance packed with suspense, while her latest, 'Cocktails and Lies' is her first foray into the cozy mystery genre. You can find more details of her novels on her website: http://www.lynettesofras.com or Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/Lynette-Sofras/...

Lynette currently lives in an early Victorian cottage in a picturesque Surrey village. When she's not reading or writing, she enjoys catching up with friends, the theatre and cinema and occasionally trying to tame her out-of-control garden and the family's eccentric cat.

Reviews

[Jenny Twist · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m a big fan of Lynette Sofras and have read all her books but this one is my favourite. I do so enjoy a good ghost story.
The plot revolves around five women who are living in an old house dedicated as a refuge for lone mothers and their children. But there is something sinister about Chichester house. The women hear voices and they and their children have disturbing dreams. And sometimes – just sometimes – the house changes. Rooms are not the same shape. There are doors where there were none before. The furniture is old-fashioned and you may glimpse a serving girl in Victorian dress or a mysterious woman in grey.
If you enjoy a spooky tale, you will love this one. It is beautifully-written in flawless English with superb plot and pacing. Like all the best writers, Ms Sofras has created characters you can care about - very important for me. (It doesn’t matter how good the writing and plot is. If I don’t care about the people I don’t care about the book.) And she certainly knows how to build suspense.
This is one of those books that is difficult to put down and one that I know I shall read again. Ms Sofras keeps on getting better and better!

[Tara Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 stars!
First off, before you begin this book, get a paper and pen, so you can make a list to keep the following characters straight. All are single mothers at the creepy Chichester Court, a home for unwed mothers who got that status in varying ways. Over the course of the book, the characters are fleshed out very well, but at first they were hard to keep straight:
Gemma, with 6yr old daughter Amy and 3 yr. old son Sam
Anne and her son Oliver
Paige and her baby Courtney (whose birth names are Pam and Cathy)
Lucy and her son Liam
There are also the unhappily married Rhia, and Johanna, a divorced woman who appears happy, as major characters.

Warning for those that believe marriage is sacrosanct: lovers abound in this story. Though most of these women are on what we call welfare in the US, and have small children, they still manage to attract men, most of whom seem keen on exacerbating the problem which landed the women in this creepy house to begin with, i.e., being single mothers.

All of these women above see or experience the ghostly manifestations of Chichester Court in some way (temporary possession—or at least very persuasive, dangerous impulses—for the women, violence/injury for the children). But I have to say, this is far more a drama on the wreckage of divorce and adultery than a horror story about what evil lurks in a house, or in men’s hearts. That is not to say I didn’t enjoy this book…it was very well written, and I really cared what happened to the characters, most of whom I could have been happy to call friends. My point is that this would have made a good drama story all on its own without the background of the spooky house and ghostly hauntings. I really enjoyed the drama and the story and the excellent dialogue, which made me cheer and laugh in spots.

I particularly liked this paragraph, which demonstrates the skill of the author in creating memorable, unusual characters that you can’t help empathizing with, even when they make terrible mistakes: Rhia felt swamped by the feeling she'd been only vaguely realising for several months but which had more recently begun to engulf her almost every time she went out of her house; her lovely house, her dream home which all her friends envied; her home with her clever, perfect children and her devoted, ideal husband. Yet for all the stability and equilibrium her life offered her now, it felt empty and stagnant compared with the lives of her friends. And not just her friends. Wherever she went, she felt compelled to look into other people's houses and believe the lives being lived out behind other windows and walls were more vibrant, more substantial than her own. And that made her feel dissatisfied, hollow…cheated….She felt like the Little Match Girl, the ragged child who gazed enviously through walls to feed off the light and lives of others.

I admit the title of this book didn’t do it for me…but that is because I failed to get the reference, alluded to below direct from the book: 'The Unworkers', that's what I call us. Unpaid, unvalued, unnoticed… we're like those little elfin tailors, beavering away invisibly, putting the world to rights with our neat little patches while we put our own lives on hold for everyone else." The unworkers in the book are women whose love relationships did not work out, leaving them hard up for cash…which resulted in the move to the creepy mansion.

And why is the house creepy? Direct from the book:
“Chichester Court has sheltered a lot of angry people. And anger breeds anger, especially in idleness and stagnant spaces, and then spills into this cauldron of resentment and conflicting emotions and simmers and bubbles over the years until all this ill-feeling spills over and leaks into the nooks and crannies, the bricks and mortar of its confinement. Where does it go? Where can it go? There are no channels to release it, only an old tangled web of discordant lines and too many empty spaces in which to breed. Oh, that house is one huge, voracious parasite for the wrong kind of energy."

Be aware of the UK wording in several places, which means not just different spellings than those in the US, but sometimes slightly different meanings. For example: a housing scheme was referred to several times, and what was meant was the organization of how mothers come to be selected to take up residence in the halfway house, not that there was something sordid about how the selection process works. (People who have read stories by UK authors will pay this no attention, but I wanted to make note of this for readers that have not read a UK author before).

In summary, an interesting spooky tale that is great to while away a rainy afternoon.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

This ghostly story surrounding the relationships between the five women of Chichester Court is an intriguing one. It was very difficult to put down as I wanted to learn more and more about each woman and about the building they shared.

The building has a dark history and it seems that some of the women are more connected to it than anyone would have thought. The building seems to have brought them all together for some reason - and not for the first time.

It takes a little while to get your head around who's who with so many characters, but once you have, you're hooked!

Lyn has such a flair for writing and it makes reading her books effortless and a real pleasure. As usual I got lost in her story and didn't want to come away from it.

[Mary Thornburg · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gemma, Anne, and Paige have four things in common. They're single mothers – Gemma and Anne, in their early 30s, are recently divorced from their children's fathers; Paige, just 17, doesn't know who her baby's father is. They're unemployed and in financial difficulties. All three live in Chichester Court, a huge 19th-century house in London that's been renovated into low-rent individual apartments. And all three are haunted – by their own pasts, and also by strange voices, dreams, apparitions and odors, ambiguous manifestations that seem at times to cross into the physical world. The most frightening aspect of these manifestations is that their main focus seems not to be on the women themselves, but on their young children.

I love this book. It's dense, detailed, visual, very real – and thus very disturbing. One of the great things about it, to my mind, is that Lynette Sofras doesn't explain everything away at the end with a sweeping justification for it all. While the ending is satisfying, it's also believable. I know these women's lives will go on. They'll continue to learn, hopefully, but they haven't learned everything yet. And they'll always wonder about the strange things that brought them together and cemented their friendship, for a little while, in this strange old house.

[Sheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unworkers by Lynette Sofras

There is an air of evil in Chichester Court and it is not a safe place to be. For five women and their children it becomes a house of terror. Strange and disturbing things happen. Frightening dreams, eerie voices trying to coerce them to do unspeakable things, and the feeling of ghostly presence occur. But when the children are in danger and they are watched by a woman in Grey things take a turn for the worst.

A well written paranormal/psychological/suspense. All five women of different ages and points in their lives, are at Chichester for their own reasons. They are trying to cope with their life altering changes and then the secrets of the house surface.

Danger lurks everywhere, no one is safe. These strangers are pulled together, by horrific events. Will they ever be able to cope with what happens behind those walls? Will their lives ever be the same? I strongly recommendUnworkers to those who love a great paranormal/suspense. A definite 5 star read!

[A. Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’m working through this author’s backlist of books which I’m enjoying so much. This one is different to the others I’ve read, about five women and a scary old house with an evil past. English setting. The women all have their own stories and different lives, but the house seems to pull them together for its own ends. Eerie and gripping as events unfold, but more for women than men, I think. Very well written with characters you can really care about – each one could have her own story. Unexpected twists at the end leave you with plenty to think about. I recommend this for people who appreciate good writing and ghostly stories that make you think.

[Janet Doolaege · Rating 4 out of 5]

For all of us, certain places and objects hold memories. But could this be literally true? Could memories of past events have seeped into the very structure of a house and still be there, like recordings, particularly if those events were violent or fraught with powerful emotion, and then could they be “played back” to unsuspecting witnesses several lifetimes later? This is one plausible explanation for the phenomenon of haunted houses. In Unworkers, Lynette Sofras takes the lives and complex relationships of five different women and shows how the past can return to haunt the present. The malevolent atmosphere of the house itself, now converted into flats, stems from past horrors and affects the residents; but the women’s own past mistakes and decisions also affect the present and weave the web of relationships that connects them all now. The past revisits the present willy-nilly, but it is also possible to go looking for understanding of the past through regression to apparent previous lives under hypnosis or through the Christos technique, as some of them do. Even if an exorcism is carried out in a haunted place, can we ever truly be free of the past? These are all questions raised by the book.

The novel contains a great many characters, including the five women’s partners, ex-partners, lovers, children and other family members. There is a helpful list of the five protagonists at the front, but even so I found it not always easy to remember who was who as I read the ebook. The women are vividly portrayed (with the possible exception of Paige, who is poor working-class and did not quite convince me), but some minor characters could, I think, have been omitted without any great loss to the plot. There is some excellent dialogue, particularly in the heated exchanges between women and men and in the budding empathy and friendship between women as they confide in one another. The writer is clearly familiar, too, with the needs and behaviour of babies and older children.

A complex novel, then, about past disappointments and future hopes and the possibility of “moving on”, all under the shadow of the sinister house. But a chilling ghost story? Not exactly. The ghostly phenomena were, I thought, intriguing rather than frightening. Nevertheless, my interest never flagged and I was keen to find out what was going to happen to these women and cared about their problems. In this novel, as in life, not all problems have a solution.

[Kathryn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Get ready for an intriguing story about a house and its inhabitants that have an intersecting past. There are lots of characters and their stories and histories are similar. Each is a mother in need of something, each of which has also experienced a tremendous amount of pain in their short lives. All of these women's stories revolve in one way or another in and around this spooky house, Chichester Court. The house in itself has its own tormented past that must be overcome.

There are many different lovers and ones needing love. Anne seems to be the pivital being in this story, as she tries to connect the dots with relation to her housemates and the history of the house. Nothing makes sense to any of the women as they try to explain the strange happenings at the house, hidden voices that no one hears aloud, images and rooms that no one else sees, forceful pushes and attacks with many different characters. It seems like the house is fighting back against them to drive the tennants away.

In many aspects, this is a heartbreaking paranormal story because of the tragedies that have occured in the house. These women must come together to rid the house of the anger and voilence towards its inhabitants.

I liked this story a ton. It is not my usual genre but I found it intriguing. Lynette Sofras is a fantastic author, and I have read all of her books. She can weave a story into such magic, that I am awed by her talent. I truly can't wait for her next book.