19 May 2013 23:40:04
It is 1867, London, and Charles Dickens is giving a reading near the house of 21-year-old Eliza Caine and her ailing father. As Dickens reads a ghost story to an enraptured audience, Eliza notes how he creates terror, marvelling at "how easily he could manipulate our emotions". But things fall apart: her father's health, worsened by the weather, declines. "I blame Charles Dickens for the death of my father," Eliza later asserts. After his death, she becomes a governess at Gaudlin Hall in Norfolk, a place inhabited not only by two children but by ghosts. It is only by confronting them that Eliza will survive, unearthing a chilling story of visceral maternal bonds stronger than death, childhood trauma, and love.
This magnificently eerie novel – the 11th by the author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas – takes us on a skilful journey through fear, showing not only how fear is created, but how it might be overcome.
