John Boyne’s This House is Haunted is one of those books that does exactly what it says on the tin and is quite enjoyable in a vaguely forgettable way. Owing quite a debt to The Turn of the Screw – with a pinch of Jane Eyre, a dollop of Dickens and a smattering of Rebecca for good measure – Boyne offers up a solid Gothic ghost story.
Following the sudden death of her father, plain Eliza Caine answers an advert to act as governess of two children in Gaudlin Hall in Norfolk. With no other options available, she takes the job, only to experience two children with no responsible adults around and lots of very sinister occurrences. As well as the children, the house appears to be inhabited by ghosts. It is only by confronting them that Eliza will survive, unearthing a chilling story of visceral maternal bonds stronger than death, childhood trauma, and love.
If there exists somewhere a checklist of tropes that should appear in a ghost story, then John Boyne has clearly checked everything off his list – an isolated country pile; self-contained possibly traumatised children; hidden characters in attics; surly country folk who turn pale when they meet our narrator and, unlike The Turn of the Screw, no unanswered questions.
It is very similar in tone to Sarah Waters’ The Little Stranger yet not quite as successful. Granted, the book barrels along, as the reader picks up the breadcrumbs of the story from other characters and the shocks pile on, but it ultimately lacks tension because we are so familiar with the genre.
Characterisation is the novel’s greatest strengths. All the characters are well drawn, and Eliza is an engrossing protagonist, reminiscent of the bookish Jane Eyre: the plain quick-witted girl who must rely on her resilience and strength to survive. For a woman in 1897, Boyne makes his Eliza quite the feminist, or as she is called in the book ‘a modern’. She questions the conventional role of women much more often than a real mid-19th-century heroine would, yet Boyne handles this aspect of her character well, and with a sharp humour.
Her conversations with Cratchett, the solicitors’ clerk, elicit her feminist credentials.
‘I’m afraid I don’t have any reading material for ladies here. The only periodical we take is the daily issue of The Times. I’m sure you would find it very boring. It’s all politics, crime and matters to do with the economy.’
‘Well, I’ll just look through it and see if there is any information about the new style in hats’, I said, smiling at him. ‘Or perhaps there’ll be a nice recipe or a knitting pattern’
This little exchange is quite tame compared to her later raging against the village vicar on the treatment of women which is quite the ‘you go girl’ moment. She is an immensely attractive character and the only one in the book, you feel, capable of taking on this visceral maternal spirit that even death can’t quell.
The denouement is dramatically dramatic, as you would expect, in fact it would give the ending of Rebecca a run for its’ money and the neat little twist, well, it was to be expected. Given that the novel stuck so slavishly to the elements of the Victorian ghost story, I did expect a little more depth. Reading at times like an historical YA novel, This House is Haunted does what it sets out to do and for the most part it delivers.
