Book Review: The Orphan Choir by Sophie Hannah

This book opens with Louise visiting her neighbour to complain about his loud music, a regular habit. To her dismay, he adds choral music to his repertoire, just to mock her. Her husband, Stuart, is frustrated with her inability to ignore it but there are other things at play - their seven year old son is at boarding school, against the wishes of his mother. In order to be in a prestigious choir, Joseph has to live at the school. Louise misses him terribly and wants him home, but home has become a building site as Stuart has insisted on sand-blasting their house. When an opportunity to buy a second home in a gated community in the country comes up, Louise jumps at the chance, eager to take Joseph there over the Christmas holidays. However, the choral music, sung by children, follows her there...

For the most part, I didn't find The Orphan Choir as scary as I thought I would, with the exception of a few creepy scenes. That all changed with the last eighty pages or so. At that point, the novel got extremely claustrophobic and I needed to get to the end before I could rest. I finished this over a week ago and yet it's still haunting me - and, yes, I mean that literally. I've been unable to stop thinking about it.

Louise is a good protagonist, stationed somewhere on the margin between believable and losing it. The pressures on her at the beginning of the novel are neatly examined and make complete sense. Perhaps that's the major strength of this book - there's a logical reason for each step and it isn't until the final pages that the reader understands where these have led to.

I won't say any more because I don't want to ruin the story. However, it is a very good read, short enough to devour in one or two sittings. Recommended as an example of Sophie Hannah's versatility. 

Book Review: The Lair of the White Worm by Bram Stoker

The Lair of the White Worm is a horror novel that unsettled me perhaps as much as it did its first readers. It tells the story of Adam Salton, an Australian who moves to England to make contact with his great-uncle. His arrival coincides with the arrival of the heir of Castra Regis, Edgar Caswall, who creates problems in the neighbourhood by seeming to apply his mesmerism skills on a local farmer's granddaughter. Adam becomes involved in this due to his relationship with the poor girl's sister. However, another woman has her eye on Edgar Caswall and Arabella March has a dark secret of her own.

While I enjoyed this I'll get my gripes out of the way first. I thought the beginning of the story dragged a little as Adam learns the historical basis for the environmental oddities. While this is vital to later comprehensive it felt as though it was shoehorned in through rather uninspiring dialogue between Adam and Sir Nathaniel. In addition, I thought the story was diluted somewhat by actually utilising Caswell and Arabella points of view. For me, it would've been much more effective if we'd only heard what they were doing via the use of servants perhaps. Also, the relationship between Adam and Mimi jumped a little too much for my liking. A theme of this novel seemed to be exposition when it wasn't necessary and insufficient development when it was necessary.

However, these niggles aside, I found The Lair of the White Worm to be one of the most disturbing books I've ever read. The final scenes, gory and sickening, have to go down as one of the most graphic descriptions of gore I've ever encountered, let alone in a book first published in the early twentieth century. Stoker uses all his descriptive powers in the final pages and it more than makes up for the ambivalence I was feeling on the points mentioned above. Stick with this one if you want nightmares.

Book Review: The Haunted Hotel by Wilkie Collins

I'd almost made it a rule not to review any book I read related to my Ph.D because I know Victorian fiction can be... stale, shall we say, to most people. However, when I finished The Haunted Hotel last night, a relatively short work by Wilkie Collins, I was terrified. I was so disturbed that I was extremely reluctant to turn the light off, and I can honestly say that's something I haven't experienced through a book before.

The beauty of The Haunted Hotel is that it doesn't rush to explain everything. It's essentially an old-fashioned ghost story, set partially in Venice, which relies on both psychological manipulation and the depiction of truly gruesome images.

I have to say, I was unsure about the first couple of chapters which focus chiefly on one of the antagonists of the novel, Countess Narona. I honestly felt a little cheated when I discovered she was embroiled in the mystery but Collins had a reason for everything. The beginning, therefore, is a trip through the family history of Lord Montbarry, Countess Narona's fiancée, which can seem to detract from the main event but is merely delaying the deliciousness of the plot proper.

Agnes Lockwood is the heroine of the story, a woman in love with Lord Montbarry before he marries the Countess. After his death at a hotel in Venice she finds herself unable to let go of his memory and marry his brother, Henry, despite being jilted by the Lord. She takes up work as a governess and when the family go to Venice they find themselves in the very hotel in which the Lord died.

I refuse to ruin the plot but I will say this: it may not be the gory shock-shock-shock of a modern horror novel but the quiet, steady build of Collins' narrative is positively more disturbing. The ghostly images which wouldn't be so frightening on their own are coupled with grotesque discoveries that root them firmly in reality.

It's a short novel - my compact copy is 190 pages - but I'd call it a book to read if you don't like reading Victorian fiction. It feels extremely modern in parts, like CSI in the 19th century.