Book Review: The Whispering House
Jul. 10th, 2021 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerLast week I described Elizabeth Brooks’ The Whispering House as Mary-Stewartish, and I think there’s definitely some Mary Stewart in its DNA, but the book is also very much its own thing, darker and more harrowing than most Mary Stewart books are. Our heroine, Freya, is deeply in mourning for her sister Stella, who five years ago jumped to her death off the cliffs near beautiful, crumbling Byrne Hall. Now, Freya comes to Byrne Hall in hope of finding some answers, and instead finds Corey, the beautifully sad scion of the house.
Freya and Corey fall into an intense, dramatic love affair, the kind where they feel like the only two people in the world. Freya throws up her job to stay at Byrne Hall so they can create an artist colony of two: Corey will paint Freya’s portrait over and over, and Freya will pursue her dream of being a writer.
Of course, it doesn’t work out that way. As the first enchantment of the love affair fades, Freya realizes that Corey’s sadness and fragility, although real, are only one side of his personality. His need for an all-consuming love affair, which Freya found so charming, becomes constricting the moment Freya starts to pull away. He grows more controlling, and a violent temper appears, as swift and terrifying as a lightning flash.
(The book portrays this really well; there’s only one incident of actual violence, but afterward the potential for explosion always feels as thick as an oncoming thunderstorm.)
Then Freya realizes that Corey is keeping his dying mother more or less prisoner upstairs, because he doesn’t want her to tell Freya… Well, what? And Freya remembers the questions about Stella’s death that first brought her to Byrne Hall. Slowly, she realizes that Corey knew Stella far better than he let on; that, in fact, he killed her.
Obviously, vengeance is in order. After toying with the idea of slitting his throat, Freya comes up with a better idea. Corey has been toying with the idea of throwing a big exhibition of his work, which Freya has hitherto opposed because she realizes that his paintings, while technically proficient, aren’t really very good. Now, she encourages him to go ahead with it… and agrees to invite her father, the brutally honest London Globe art critic, who will of course review the exhibition.
“FREYA,” I gasped, shocked to my bones. I was on board with the throat-slitting, but helping Corey arrange an exhibition which is destined to miserable, humiliating, public failure in front of everyone he knows, which will then be reported in a blistering review in the national paper? Is it a bridge too far? Can it be a bridge too far when it’s clearly so much less bad than murder??? Is this justice?
Anyway. After the exhibition, Freya’s father refuses to write the review. (He doesn’t know about the Stella connection; he just recognizes that Freya’s making him a pawn in relationship drama and he Does Not Like It). Through a series of events too complicated to describe here, Corey locks Freya up in the very same attic where he once imprisoned Stella, with directions that Freya will write a review of the exhibition.
Which she does. Freya writes a brutally accurate, absolutely vicious review, because she figures Corey is going to kill her too, and that review is the only vengeance she or Stella will ever have. She pushes it under the attic door and waits in the darkness until she falls asleep.
When she wakes up in the morning, she finds the attic door open. Downstairs, all the canvases have been eviscerated with the self-same knife that Freya once considered using to slit Corey’s throat. And Corey himself has slit his wrists, and lies dead in the bath.
This is of course a classic murder mystery ending: the detective knows who did it, but there isn’t enough evidence to convict, so the suspect kills himself. The twist here is that Freya doesn’t know who did it. Her suspicions are incredibly understandable (Corey is absolutely bad news!), but incorrect. Corey didn’t kill Stella. Corey’s mother killed her. And Freya never finds out.
Corey’s mother has spent the last few weeks dying alone and without medical care in an upstairs room, because Corey locked her up there so he could pursue his love affair with Freya. So Stella is, in a sense, avenged.
But, again: is this justice? The guilty have been punished, more or less, or at least have suffered. But the truth has not come out. And can there be any justice without truth?
The ending has haunted me since I read it. I suspect it will stick with me for a long time.
Freya and Corey fall into an intense, dramatic love affair, the kind where they feel like the only two people in the world. Freya throws up her job to stay at Byrne Hall so they can create an artist colony of two: Corey will paint Freya’s portrait over and over, and Freya will pursue her dream of being a writer.
Of course, it doesn’t work out that way. As the first enchantment of the love affair fades, Freya realizes that Corey’s sadness and fragility, although real, are only one side of his personality. His need for an all-consuming love affair, which Freya found so charming, becomes constricting the moment Freya starts to pull away. He grows more controlling, and a violent temper appears, as swift and terrifying as a lightning flash.
(The book portrays this really well; there’s only one incident of actual violence, but afterward the potential for explosion always feels as thick as an oncoming thunderstorm.)
Then Freya realizes that Corey is keeping his dying mother more or less prisoner upstairs, because he doesn’t want her to tell Freya… Well, what? And Freya remembers the questions about Stella’s death that first brought her to Byrne Hall. Slowly, she realizes that Corey knew Stella far better than he let on; that, in fact, he killed her.
Obviously, vengeance is in order. After toying with the idea of slitting his throat, Freya comes up with a better idea. Corey has been toying with the idea of throwing a big exhibition of his work, which Freya has hitherto opposed because she realizes that his paintings, while technically proficient, aren’t really very good. Now, she encourages him to go ahead with it… and agrees to invite her father, the brutally honest London Globe art critic, who will of course review the exhibition.
“FREYA,” I gasped, shocked to my bones. I was on board with the throat-slitting, but helping Corey arrange an exhibition which is destined to miserable, humiliating, public failure in front of everyone he knows, which will then be reported in a blistering review in the national paper? Is it a bridge too far? Can it be a bridge too far when it’s clearly so much less bad than murder??? Is this justice?
Anyway. After the exhibition, Freya’s father refuses to write the review. (He doesn’t know about the Stella connection; he just recognizes that Freya’s making him a pawn in relationship drama and he Does Not Like It). Through a series of events too complicated to describe here, Corey locks Freya up in the very same attic where he once imprisoned Stella, with directions that Freya will write a review of the exhibition.
Which she does. Freya writes a brutally accurate, absolutely vicious review, because she figures Corey is going to kill her too, and that review is the only vengeance she or Stella will ever have. She pushes it under the attic door and waits in the darkness until she falls asleep.
When she wakes up in the morning, she finds the attic door open. Downstairs, all the canvases have been eviscerated with the self-same knife that Freya once considered using to slit Corey’s throat. And Corey himself has slit his wrists, and lies dead in the bath.
This is of course a classic murder mystery ending: the detective knows who did it, but there isn’t enough evidence to convict, so the suspect kills himself. The twist here is that Freya doesn’t know who did it. Her suspicions are incredibly understandable (Corey is absolutely bad news!), but incorrect. Corey didn’t kill Stella. Corey’s mother killed her. And Freya never finds out.
Corey’s mother has spent the last few weeks dying alone and without medical care in an upstairs room, because Corey locked her up there so he could pursue his love affair with Freya. So Stella is, in a sense, avenged.
But, again: is this justice? The guilty have been punished, more or less, or at least have suffered. But the truth has not come out. And can there be any justice without truth?
The ending has haunted me since I read it. I suspect it will stick with me for a long time.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 12:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 01:41 pm (UTC)And an incredibly intense love affair with Corey is (at least for a while) an Answer to that second question. It's only as the intensity fades and weirdnesses start adding up that Freya starts to realize that maybe there are Answers of the first sort here.
no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 02:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-10 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-19 05:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-07-19 05:26 pm (UTC)