The Feast by Margaret Kennedy

Cornwall, Midsummer 1947. Pendizack Manor Hotel is buried in the rubble of a collapsed cliff. Seven guests have perished, but what brought this strange assembly together for a moonlit feast before this Act of God -- or Man? Over the week before the landslide, we meet the hotel guests in all their eccentric glory: and as friendships form and romances blossom, sins are revealed, and the cracks widen.

This book starts out with a clergyman at a loss for how to write a eulogy for seven people who died in a hotel when a cliff fell on it and crushed it. We're then taken back to life in the hotel a week before the disaster. We get to know everyone and watch how their interactions change them (or don't). It's only natural that the reader soon begins to worry about who will die at the hotel and who will be safely away. It hit me with a start when I was reading about children traveling to spend their vacation there and I thought, "Children! No!" This tension continued through the book as I grew fond of characters and worried they would be among the fatalities.

There was equal tension as some characters changed in ways that allowed for growth and redemption of the trajectories their lives had been on. This book is not just about the mystery of who will live and who will die. It is also about spiritual realities by which these people live their lives. It is a rare find and I highly recommend it.