Then the daughter, who’s taken her mother’s name, comes banging on the door of the local priest, saying her father has gone. The police duly arrive to investigate, but leave young Helen at the priest’s house over the weekend. When she can’t be found, the finger of suspicion, with a nod to the events portrayed in A History of Loneliness, understandably falls on him.
Conor O’Callaghan’s debut novel is disturbing in the way that a nightmare is disturbing: there’s a veritable air of menace but, without a coherent narrative, impossible to explain and so fades away on exposure to the real world. Thanks to Transworld for my review copy.
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Grossly disfigured in late adolescence (reminding me of Sean in Wolf in White Van), Morgan rarely leaves the large country house built and furnished by his exiled grandfather. One day, Engel, his housekeeper, discovers a baby left on the steps by the back door. Soon more children arrive, more than he can count, their presence in the house both a source of joy (especially as they show no fear of his grotesque appearance) and vaguely unsettling. What makes them at times so typically childlike, at others fiercely mature? Where do they go when the house descends into an eerie quietness? From where does David, the eldest, acquire his evident authority and is Morgan right to trust his advice?
Soon the local physician Dr Crane takes up residence in the house, the nearest to a friend Morgan has ever had. Like Samuel Browne, the volunteer archivist in The Sacred Combe, the doctor becomes absorbed in exploring the mansion’s library, and its attics too. The children also, once they learn to read and write, are on a quest to uncover the secrets the building holds.
An atmospheric and distorted fairytale, this is another novel where I struggled to find the meaning under the surface. I thought perhaps the house might be a representation of Morgan’s psyche, and the numerous children split-off fragments of his unacknowledged and darker desires (p99):
He imagined himself the dirty secret at the heart of the world, the overlooked madwoman raving in the attic of a house that occupied everything there was, each brick and pane and board, the wondering prince in the hair-filled mask of iron he had dreamt of as a boy and never been able to forget.
This reading seems supported by the discovery of two extremely lifelike wax models: one of a heavily pregnant woman; the other man’s head with removable scalp and skull through which one might examine the human brain.
But the focus turns to the question of the source of Morgan’s wealth and the exact business of the family factory now run by a sister he never sees. The Children’s Home becomes a story of human cruelty, of the corruption of innocence in pursuit of profit, evoking the evil of the Holocaust. As the children say, in their first writing exercise (p106):
I AM ONLY A CHILD BUT ALREADY I HAVE UNDERSTOOD THE WICKEDNESS OF THE WORLD.
A disturbing and thought-provoking novel, and short enough to take a risk on if you’re not sure you’d like it. Thanks to Aardvark Bureau for my review copy.