The meager staff comes from a village farther afield.
The people of the nearby village are frightened of the house and will not work there. She is accompanied only by her husband’s cousin, Sarah. Before her marriage, Elsie and her younger brother Jolyon, owned and ran a match factory in London. Her recent widowhood, and the fact that this rural abode is far, far different from her life in London, makes Elisabeth “Elsie” Bainbridge miss her late husband all the more. The societal norms of the time dictate that she wear black for a year. The novel then takes us back one year as we join a young, pregnant widow as she travels to her country house for the first time. It is the year 1866 and the conditions in the asylum are abhorrent.
Mute and badly scarred, she exists in a tragic hell, both physically and in her own mind. With two historical timelines, set around two hundred years apart the novel begins with an inmate of an insane asylum. And WOW, what a ghost story! Creepy, gothic, and utterly unique, this novel will remain in my memory for years to come. I just had to end the month of October with a ghost story.
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