Well, I have finally broken my duck and have abandoned my re-read pile and opened up this first novel by Lucie Whitehouse, sent to me by those lovely generous people at Bloomsbury. A good sit down curl up cup of tea get involved read.
The narrator, Jo, is part of a close knit group who met at University and have remained friends ever since. One member of this group, Lucas, inherits Stoneborough Manor after his uncle's death, his own father being dead and being brought up by this particular relative, and he decides to give up his law practice, move there and use it as a place where he and the circle can spend regular time together. However, the house has a haunted, dark feeling to it which only Jo seems to sense. A cache of old films taken at the same house some thirty years earlier fascinate Lucas as the group seems to be disturbingly similar to their own, even reflecting the tensions and strains which are escalated by the stifling heat of a hot summer.
Friendships and relationships are tense and broken over the months with Jo, who is the closest friend Lucas possesses, finding herself drawn to the one outsider, Greg, who joins the group as the boyfriend of another, Rachel.
If I say this book has an old fashioned feel about it, I mean it in the sense that it is the kind of book that I used to read in the 80s and 90s, a Penny VIncenzi, Rosamunde Pilcher type of story, with all the characters existing in a relatively closed time frame and world. The Group seems to hark back to the days of the 60s and 70s where communes and hippies let it all hang out, the drug taking in The House at Midnight is that of those long hot summer days, sharing a spliff and generally getting drunk and sleeping with whoever seems handy. I was not sure what to make of this story when I started it and it took me a little while to become absorbed as nearly all of the protagonists were people I would not want to cross the road to meet, with the exception of Jo who, as the story progresses, begins to realise that this closed world mirrored her lack of progression in her career, is too stifling and has to end. She breaks free with Greg and then the entire edifice crumbles, the rot sets in, and nasty things start crawling out of the woodshed.
This is a gothicky read, lots of dark secrets in the past affecting the present with revelations aplenty before the ending, and over it all looms the mencing house which seems to have a life and presence all of its own. Shades of Manderley here I feel.
As I said, a little time for me to get into this but once I did, I read it straight through and thoroughly enjoyed it. A great read.
