eleanorrigbyreads-blog

[eleanorrigbyreads-blog]

But I have sometimes thought that a woman’s nature is like a great house full of rooms: there is the hall, through which everyone passes in going in and out; the drawing-room, where one receives formal visits; the sitting-room, where the members of the family come and go as they list; but beyond that, far beyond, are other rooms, the handles of whose doors perhaps are never turned; no one knows the way to them, no one knows whither they lead; and in the innermost room, the holy of holies, the soul sits alone and waits for a footstep that never comes.

Edith Wharton, The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton (via days-of-reading)

[eleanorrigbyreads-blog]

Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver - book review

Greetings from confinement!!

Please excuse the shadowy mess of a picture taken from my coffin box room I’ve not left since the weekend. My housemate has all the symptoms, so we have completely isolated from her and the rest of the world. Silver lining of this is being able to return to the crutch of my youth (r e a d i n g) to distract from wavering sanity.

Wakenhyrst 2.5/5 - spoilers

Maud is motivated to sell the story of her fathers crime of murder because the stately home she inherited from him needs a new roof. As a recluse of 50 plus years, she harbours great secrets. We get a lengthy commentary to her father’s descent into madness when she was sixteen, spooked by his past and its devils. Most of the information surrounding his demise comes from his private diaries she read. She comes to the conclusion from these ledgers that he thinks the devil is in her and the only option is to drive an ice pick into her forehead. It’s actually her ex-lover Clem who is to die in an out-of-nowhere turn of events.

I flew through bits of this happily and felt scorned by parts that seemed to last an age. Reading the authors note gives the retrospective reader some reasoning to the plot and structure points and definitely added half a point to my valuation of it. In this note, the author said herself that framing the story in the prologue is an essence of gothic literature. However, this is the part I feel was most unfulfilling. The first maybe thirty pages was a chatty newspaper article that seemed like a parody of investigative journalism and didn’t carry the weight of seriousness found in the later drama to come (perhaps intentional?). What’s more, the journalist in the prologue and the one we don’t see again till the epilogue could’ve been two completely different people.

The middle part, Maud’s story, could’ve been taken out to stand on its own, or the author could’ve made it more interactive between the past and present like a real story being told in real time. Part of me thinks the random friendship divulged in the last ten pages of Maud and journalist Robin cheapened the whole integrity of the story.

Maud’s fathers descent into mysticism-fuelled madness seemed accurate but was so boring. It was basically her dad finding spurring bits of information from books that don’t entirely link (protagonist admits this herself) and documents these in a private (blah) diary Maud reads but doesn’t really react to till she realises she might be his target. I want to say one of the themes was ‘art imitates life’ considering most of the father’s actions came from the history of life and art he studied, as well as his own past sins he spun in his mind, the fact in the mental asylum he becomes an infamous painter is reckoning.

The question of whether his madness had any grounding is left open; time and time again I asked myself if I cared. In other respects the reader is spoon fed information to compensate for the dullness of diary entries.

On a brighter note, Maud was realistic. I enjoyed all the trials and adversity she had to endure, rooting for her and her love of her home in the fen was a big part of why I finished this, I don’t care what any literary critic says, environment is as much a character of a novel as a person is. Clem and Rubal were also great, both set up well for their demise I was too ignorant to have not suspected coming.