#Titanuary ‘Such Pretty Things’ by Lisa Heathfield

About the book…

A terrifying story of ghosts and grief, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackon’s The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, in award-winning author Lisa Heathfield’s first adult novel.

Clara and her younger brother Stephen are taken by their father to stay with their aunt and uncle in a remote house in the hills as their mother recovers from an accident. At first, they see it as a summer to explore. There’s the train set in the basement, the walled garden with its secret graves and beyond it all the silent loch, steady and waiting.

Auntie has wanted them for so long—real children with hair to brush and arms to slip into the clothes made just for them. All those hours washing, polishing, preparing beds and pickling fruit and now Clara and Stephen are here, like a miracle, on her doorstep.

But the reality of two children—their noise, their mess, their casual cruelties–begins to overwhelm Auntie. The children begin to uncover things Auntie had thought left buried, and Clara can feel her brother slipping away from her. This hastily created new family finds itself falling apart, with terrifying consequences for them all.

‘Such Pretty Things’ is a deeply chilling and haunting story about the slow shattering nature of grief, displacement, jealousy and an overwhelming desire to love and be loved.

I am not sure if it went in subliminally, and then I forgot that I had made such a link, but ‘Turn Of The Screw’, with 2 vulnerable children at risk , and haunted , was where my mind went to when I picked up my gifted copy of ‘Such Pretty Things’. So it was a bit of a shock reading the link in the Goodreads synopsis of this book, where Shirley Jackson and James’ masterpiece are referenced. Also, we have been watching all the sublime ‘Ghost Stories at the Beeb’ on the iPlayer, where many of James’ stories are given adaptations that leave you looking deeper into the shadows as you climb up to bed, and the wind whistling around the house seems almost sinister…

The gothic sensibilities of this novel are accelerated by the lack of a precise time frame, giving the impression that it could happen any where, and at any time frame. Stephen and Carla (Is there a Dr Who reference there, or has my super nerdy brain joined the names where they are just siblings?) are deposited at theur Auntie’s house , in  the middle of nowhere. Unable to take care of their mother who is hospitalised after a fire , as well as work and raise the children, the only family available to take them are Auntie, and her husband, Uncle Warren.

Auntie is known as that, ‘Auntie’, and despite being the children’s mother’s sister, she seems entirely unknown and alien to them. Aside from having never met her before, she brings to the fore all their feelings about their missing mother, as she is very very different.

Her internal monologue is written in italics, seperating what she thinks from what Carla and Stephen think. Her lack of a name, simply ‘Auntie’, creates an amorphous persona without an identity, she is a token female, a motherless woman whose entire energies are poured in her home. The floor which she polished until her knees are bruised to the bone. The clothes that she makes, by hand for the children take on a sinister significance, it reminded me of tiny, handmade stitches on doll’s clothes which I use to sew at night and leave, as surprise presents for my daughters on their toys. It felt, however, sinister here, she was doing her best to make them feel wanted, but her need to almost strip them of any vestige of their mother’s love, and trying to prove herself worthy to supplant her sister, this seemed intensely creepy. And it almost felt, especially in the way in which Clara describes the type of clothes Auntie makes, the scratchiness of the fabric and unusual shaping-suits, 3-piece suits for a small boy?-like she was sewing them into a shroud, sewing them into her life and cutting them out of their previous life.

With no frame of reference, no time span for staying with Auntie, her strange meals and off mutterings could be at first written off as trying too hard to make the children feel welcome. But as the pages fly by, it becomes increasingly sinister as, in the great traditions of folk lore and myths, Carla has to stand up for herself and Stephen in the face of a woman, who has never had children, is awkward around them, and contradicts the wide ranging space which any child would like to play in, by wanting them to stay inside the suffocating air of her too-large house.

It should be a dream for them , time and space to heal, and yet, the amount of room they have to run around in feels almost claustrophobic. They are trying to be good, and polite children and yet, there is something not quite right here.

Will they ever leave?

Will they uncover who, or what is buried in those 5 graves, hidden in the walled garden, at the back of the property?

Will Carla be able to pull back her younger brother and stand up for them both, as Steven’s attempts to fit in and not hurt his aunt’s feelings turn into him being subsumed by her need to ‘mother’ them both?

There are dark and sinister secrets lurking in this odd house, there is a history behind the dolls, 3 of them, which sit n the upstairs window ledge, looking out at the world. ‘Such Pretty Things’, murmurs Auntie. And you cannot help but feel there is a creepy reason for them being where they are.

Is there?

Do they represent Auntie, her sister, and ….who else?

Are they her lost children?

Will she succeed in taking ownership of Clara and Stephen?

Pick up this deeply unnerving novel and find out for yourself…

*Also. if you haven’t seen it before, I can absolutely recommend the fantastic ‘The Mezzotint’  , the Ghost Story for Christmas resurrected from its grave by the superb Mark Gatiss along with these. He is very scary on BBC Radio 4 Extra as ‘The Man In Black’ (not currently available but worth looking out for! *

About the author…