Harrowing house

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This article was published 20/01/2024 (937 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There is a writers’ credo that says never open with a dream. However, because Virginia author Alix E. Harrow installs dreaming as a through line for her dark fantasy Starling House, in this case it works.

“I dream sometimes about a house I have never seen,” shares our 26-year-old main character, Opal. She’s referring to the Gothic monstrosity known as Starling House, which sits a few miles away from the motel she and younger brother Jasper call home in the now-dying Kentucky coal-mining town of Eden, where starlings murmur and the river sings.

The house is well known to townsfolk but tucked away from prying eyes by overgrown foliage; visitors are discouraged by its padlocked iron gate. Built in 1869 by Elizabeth Starling, widow of one of the three Gravely brothers who established the original coal mine (and whose descendants still control much of the town), residents say it is cursed, the coroner its only visitor.

Before her mysterious disappearance and assumed death in 1886, Elizabeth wrote a children’s’ book called The Underland about a lonely girl who makes friends with monsters that dwell deep below the surface of the earth. Despite describing the book as nothing special, Opal is obsessed with it, and has kept it hidden under her bed since her mother’s tragic death 11 years earlier. We understand it is significant, even if she does not.

Opal tries very hard to convince us she is a terrible human unworthy of sympathy. A high-school dropout, fierce and ill-mannered, she steals and lies without burden of guilt. We soon learn, however, that everything she does is to create a better life for Jasper.

Harrow, a former professor of history, doesn’t weigh opening pages with character and place histories integral to the story, as a less skilled author might. Instead, this information is subtly stitched into character discoveries. We are pitched headlong into plot when, after a horrible day at a part-time job she detests, Opal passes by Starling House and stops. She is drawn to the rusted iron gate, twisted with ivy, that doesn’t quite hide gargoyle-ish features; she grasps it so tight that she is cut. Her blood as calling card causes the padlock to release and the gates to swing open.

Opal is immediately confronted by current resident and caretaker Arthur Starling who, like his predecessors, is already the stuff of rampant rumour and legend. Opal feels his eyes “clawing” into hers. As she struggles to come up with a lie for her intrusion, he leans close and instructs her to run. She does, but not for long. She is compelled to return to Starling House, where Arthur offers her a cleaning job for a good deal more money than she will earn anywhere else.

Desperate to send Jasper to a private school far from Eden, Opal accepts. Inside the house she makes curious discoveries which trigger a chain of events that steer corporate and fantastical monsters toward a collision course she, and the town, may not survive.

Also known for her short fiction and novellas, this is Hugo award-winning Harrow’s third novel. Despite her curious choice to use footnotes in the first quarter, which may be distracting, Starling House is well paced, rich with lush descriptions and turns of phrase startling in their beauty. The story ends as it began: with a dream.

Author and actor Anita Daher lives in dreams and dreams in story.