This creepy, compelling gothic novel was the perfect read for October nights. Margaret Lea, a bibliophile and sometime biographer, is summoned to the home of a reclusive writer who is finally ready to reveal the truth about her background -- incest, insanity, and murder set in a decaying ancestral home (the plot owes much to Jane Eyre, The Turn of the Screw, and even The Fall of the House of Usher).
Margaret's narration is at first overwritten and mannered, something I find in gothic novels no matter when they are written; I think in most cases a baroque plot is better served with plainer language. As the book progresses, however, and Margaret gets caught up in Vida Winter's story, her style settles down. Vida's sections, on the other hand, are a treat. There is a real satisfaction in seeing this character who has written so many stories and told so many lies struggle to finally tell the truth, and to do it coherently. In particular, the way she shifts from third person to first person plural to first person singular is crucial to understanding who she truly is (literally and metaphorically).
The novel is stripped of any extraneous material; there are no references to friends or outsiders, the world at large is barely mentioned, and descriptions of surroundings are kept to a minimum. This not only emphasizes the claustrophobia of the stories themselves -- Margaret's and Vida's -- it adds a sense of eerie timelessness to the narrative. Read this with a mug of cocoa and a blanket wrapped around yourself.
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