The Marsh House
by Zoe Somerville
The novel’s “present” is December 1962. Still nursing her wounds following a painful marriage breakdown, Malorie decides to spend Christmas with her little daughter Franny at a remote house in Norfolk. She chooses her destination on a whim, solely because, judging from a photo given to her before her mother’s death, it seems that the building has some mysterious connection with her parents’ past. In the old attic, Malorie discovers notebooks in which Rosemary, a woman who had lived at the house over three decades before, relates her tragic story. The second plot timeline is, in fact, provided by the content of these notebooks, which describe a local tragedy which unfolded in the politically charged period between the two great wars. As Malorie becomes more and more engrossed with Rosemary’s tale, she increasingly feels that she is being haunted by its protagonists.
The Marsh House borrows many Gothic and horror tropes, with the most obvious being the setting – a rundown mansion at the verge of the Norfolk marshes, redolent of Michelle Paver’s Wakenhyrst. As in the best supernatural tales, the novel plays on the element of doubt – are the Malorie’s visions otherworldly in nature, or simply the creation of an overworked, troubled, altered mind? The fluidity between past and present sometimes makes this more of a timeslip novel (that, and the Christmas context reminded me at times of Alison Littlewood’s Mistletoe.)
Atmospheric
and creepy as The Marsh House is, I ultimately felt that it works best
as a piece of vividly conceived historical fiction which can be read and enjoyed
even without the supernatural trappings.
This is a novel which looks into unsavoury aspects of the inter-war
years, particularly the rise of pro-Nazi sentiment in Britain. Without any facile condemnations, Somerville
depicts families falling under the spell of a hateful ideology and the cruel
consequences of this, set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing world
which is turning its back on the rural wisdom of its elders.
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