THIS HOUSE IS HAUNTED

by John Boyne

I love horror and always have done , but the problem I have with the genre is that it can tend to be rather cliched so that once I start reading a horror novel  , I find myself always looking out for the obvious victims and attempting to work out all the twists for myself . Rarely am I wrong in my assumptions. However , with John Boyne's tale of terror , This House is Haunted , I have found myself faced with all the usual cliches , but the author has presented them in a manner which kept me on my toes. 

Ok , so there is the mysterious coachman who conveys the novel's main protagonist , Eliza Caine, to the spooky and menacing Gaudlin Hall in Norfolk . There are two strange but likeable children ( a la Turn of the Screw) , a mysterious nurse whose comings and goings are as unsettling as any ghostly behaviour in the book , and that ultimate cliche : the locals all in despair at Eliza going to Gaudlin Hall and none of them wanting to talk to her about the place except to proffer advice along the lines of "don't go there!".

So far , it sounds pretty cliched , but from the opening line "I blame Charles Dickens for my father's death" , I was hooked and couldn't put the book down . Boyne has created a spectacularly spooky and gothic setting for his book , and the characters are instantly believable. With the two children , Eustace and Isabella , comparisons with the Turn of the Screw are obvious but Boyne has given this part of the tale a new and unexpected dimension. For reasons I will not divulge (so as not to spoil the book) , I would also add comparisons to du Maurier's Rebecca.

John Boyne has succeeded in breathing new life into a genre which was becoming slightly stale and in so doing has created what is probably one of the first classics of horror fiction in the 21st century. Highly recommended.


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