bazhsw
6/27/2021
**Review may indicate minor spoilers, particularly around plot reveals**
This one struggled to land with me. I really wanted to like it and a lot of buttons were pressed but it didn't all hang together in the end, turning a potentially good book into an okay one.
The premise of the book is Catherine Howard is a valuer for an auctioneer and has the 'deal of a career' in her hands. She's invited to attend the home of an elderly, eccentric recluse to value a doll collection. The elderly owner of the dolls also has in her possession artwork of her deceased uncle, a famed taxidermist who committed suicide decades ago.
The cynic in me says this book is extremely derivative and pulls on every creepy haunted house trope in the book. The fan in me however celebrates this book for taking a theme then adding a few more then instead of being mindful of creating a mess adding even more to give you a scare-a-thon!
So many buttons are pressed - are you scared of isolation? Are you scared of the closeness to death age brings? Do dolls and puppets freak you out? What about stinking miasma of pestilence? What about the loneliness and hopelessness of being bullied? Or maybe taxidermy and the blending of human and animal? Extreme body modification? Or just are you scared of the dark?
There is so much in this book to be creeped out by and I feel that most readers will find something unsettling in here. I really love Nevill's 'haunted houses' - he can really unsettle a reader with what it feels like to be alone in the dark and he has such a visual style of writing - there is one scene in particular where Catherine sees a tableau of taxidermy and one trembles at trying to understand what horrors one must have in their mind to compose such a piece and to undertake such a piece of work - days after reading I can't 'unsee' the horrors of the piece or it's creation.
One theme in particular revolves around the treatment of disabled children and through a modern lens reading this book is quite challenging. I think there will be a generation of British readers (those who remember the crippled boy and dog collection 'tins' outside shops) who will be quite touched and unnerved. It doesn't seem that long ago that we viewed disabled children in the context of their disability and not their humanity.
Aside from all the 'creepy haunted house' and 'house full of unsettling shit' I really liked the main character of Catherine. She is a victim first and foremost, she has been rejected by society through no fault of her own and no matter what she tries to do to pull herself out she carries on getting shit on. Anyone who has experienced bullying whether as a child or adult could well be triggered by this but Nevill rather brilliantly touches how it feels to be victimised and tormented (as an aside there are some who complain about the 'youth of today' and I swear the childhoods of the 70's and 80's were no barrel of laughs if you didn't fit in). It brought back feelings one kind of wished were locked away.
I suppose my only criticism of Catherine is that it is soon apparent she has no agency whatsoever. It kind of fits the story and there is a reason why but in terms of reading a book and rooting for the main character you want to scream, 'do something different'. So it fits and makes sense but doesn't make a good book for it.
The last fifth of the book has about four 'big' plot reveals - two of them I had worked out (one telegraphed ridiculously early) and one I didn't answered a key question that bothered me throughout.
The end is a bit of a mess and I pretty much raced through it wanting to finish, didn't really get it and the emotional impact kind of was missing for me. It's sad because the ingredients are there but it just ran out of steam.