August 5, 2013
In 1867 England, 21-year-old Eliza Caine is left completely alone in the world when her father suddenly takes ill and dies. In a fit of melancholia, she responds to an advertisement for a governess to care for a pair of children in the wilds of Norfolk. When she receives a positive response, Eliza realizes that her life is about to undergo a cataclysmic change: she has never been out of London, she has never been a governess, and she knows nothing about Gaudlin Hall—which turns out to be an imposing pile of a building, spine-chillingly odd, unsettling, and spooky—or her new employers. Drawing sometimes excessively on Rebecca, Wuthering Heights, and the works of Wilkie Collins and Dickens, Boyne (The House of Special Purpose) creates a subtle, satisfying tale of ghostly terror.
January 27, 2014
In Boyne’s thriller, 19th-century England is infused with the supernatural. Narrator Larkin—born in America but raised in England—effectively captures Boyne’s characters, particularly the manner in which both class and gender shape daily life. In giving voice to protagonist Eliza Caine—an unmarried, young schoolteacher who becomes a governess to a wealthy rural family shrouded in mystery—she ably conveys the character’s stoic practicality and idealistic yearning for social acceptance and economic freedom. Larkin also does a masterful job rendering the male voices, especially prominent village figures such as the barrister and clergyman, both steeped in the male privilege of the era. Yet, the most memorable aspect of Larkin’s performance is her eerie portrayal of the two young children at the center of the otherworldly forces that Eliza encounters. An Other Press paperback.