The Paperchase Marcel Theroux

Damien March hasn't thought of his eccentric uncle for almost twenty years when he receives a terse message by telegram. "Patrick dead. Father." Damien, a journalist for the BBC in London, is even more shocked to learn that he has inherited his uncle's ramshackle house on Ionia, an isolated island off the coast of Cape Cod. Offered the choice between his own humdrum life and the strange isolation of his uncle's, he decides to make the swap.