A lonely mansion, a young governess, two young children in white nightgowns, servants who seem to vanish into thin air, villagers who refuse to answer any questions, gusts of wind that blow up out of nowhere and disappear as suddenly as they came…
“You are not there, Father,” I cried. “I wake up at Gaudlin Hall, I spend most of my day there, I sleep there at night. And throughout it all there is but one thought running through my mind.”
“And that is?”
“This house is haunted.”
This House is Haunted is a wonderful Victorian-style ghost story and a perfect October read.
It begins in London with a public reading by Charles Dickens, attended by young schoolteacher Eliza Caine and her invalid father, a big admirer of Dickens. As they walk home in the cold after the reading, her father’s health worsens and he dies shortly after, leaving Eliza blaming Dickens for his death. Alone in the world, Eliza decides to answer an advertisement in the newspaper and finds herself being offered the position of governess at Gaudlin Hall in Norfolk.
Arriving at the train station, she experiences what will be the first in a series of unexplained and increasingly sinister incidents when she feels a pair of ghostly hands try to push her under a moving train. Eliza survives this attack and continues to her destination where she meets her two young charges, twelve-year-old Isabella and eight-year-old Eustace Westerley, but it soon becomes obvious that something is wrong. Isabella and Eustace appear to be alone in the house and won’t tell Eliza where their parents are or when she will be able to speak to them. As she slowly pieces together the truth about Gaudlin Hall and learns the fates of the previous governesses, Eliza begins to fear for her own life.
I loved this book. It reminded me of The Séance by John Harwood, though there were shades of lots of other novels too, from Jane Eyre to The Turn of the Screw. Dickens is another big influence; as well as the author himself appearing in the book’s opening scenes, the characters also have suitably Dickensian names, such as Mr Raisin the lawyer, who has a clerk called Mr Cratchett. I really liked the narrator, Eliza, and it was a pleasure to spend 300 pages in her company. The author has obviously made an effort to create an authentic Victorian narrative voice and it worked well, though I did notice a few inaccuracies and words that felt too modern.
Although this is a very atmospheric book, I didn’t find it a very scary one – it’s too predictable and the ghostly manifestations are a bit too ridiculous (the tone of the novel seemed to be somewhere between serious ghost story and parody). But this didn’t make the book any less enjoyable, entertaining and fun to read and once I got past the first few chapters I didn’t want to put it down.
I highly recommend This House is Haunted if you’re looking for something ghostly and Victorian to read as we approach Halloween – I enjoyed this much more than The Woman in Black!
I received a copy of this book for review via Netgalley.
She Reads Novels 
I love the sound of this book, perfect for this time of year 🙂
It’s an ideal book for Halloween…it has everything you could want in a ghost story.
Sounds more like Wilkie Collins than Dickens to me, but I like Boyne so definitely one for the reading list.
Oh, it definitely has some elements of a Wilkie Collins novel, but overall it reminded me of Jane Eyre with a supernatural twist! This is the first book I’ve read by John Boyne but I’m interested in trying some of his others now.
The one that brought him to public attention was ‘The Boy in the Stripped Pyjamas’. Not one for the faint hearted. In the end I wasn’t certain it was completely successful, but definitely worth seeking out.
This sounds like a great book! I just finished reading Hill’s The Woman in Black…and while I liked it, I’m glad to hear that this book is better. Thanks for the review! Can’t wait to check this one out.
Most people seem to love The Woman in Black but I wasn’t all that impressed by it. This one is great!
This does sound like a perfect Gothic setting – by an author I haven’t heard of before. I still need to read a couple of books for RIP!
I’ve read five books for RIP so far but only two of them were on my original list. I keep discovering other books that are more tempting!
I wondered about this one after reading mixed reports, but it does sound as if the strengths more than make up for the few weaknesses. My library has copies in the county so I shall see if they can get one to me in time for Halloween.
I think you might like this one. There were a few flaws, but nothing that spoiled my enjoyment of it.
If the ghostly sections are a parody then that’s surely all well and good, ironically. I like the sound of it a lot.
I’m not sure if they were intended to be taken seriously or not, but they did feel more like a parody to me.