#BlogTour ‘The House Of Ashes’ by Stuart Neville

About the book…

For fans of Gillian Flynn and Tana French, a chilling story of a Northern Irish murder sixty years buried

Sara Keane’s husband, Damien, has uprooted them from England and moved them to his native Northern Ireland for a “fresh start” in the wake of her nervous breakdown. Sara, who knows no one in Northern Ireland, is jobless, carless, friendless—all but a prisoner in her own house. When a blood-soaked old woman beats on the door, insisting the house is hers before being bundled back to her care facility, Sara begins to understand the house has a terrible history her husband never intended for her to discover.

Through the counterpoint voices of two women—one modern Englishwoman, one Northern Irish farmgirl speaking from half a century earlier—Stuart Neville offers a chilling and gorgeous portrait of violence and resilience in this truly haunting narrative.

My thanks to Tracy Fenton for the blogtour invite, and publishers Zaffre for my gifted review copy of ‘The House Of Ashes’ by Stuart Neville, which is out from February 3rd in e-book and hardcover formats.

*I will try to avoid spoilers through this review, apologies for unravelling any plot points, however, I feel contextual impact is important to understanding how dark, necessary and heartrending this book is, dealing with sexual abuse, physical abuse, coercive control, kidnap and torture*

More than 60 years separates the two principle narrators in The House Of Ashes, and yet, the themes remain the same as the astonishingly high figures of women murdered, which has remained unchanging throughout the twentieth century, and still show no sign of decreasing.

Mary, the old woman who appears at Ashes House, trying to get in and insisting that it is is her home and that she needs to be there, collides with Sara, the young woman whose husband has moved with her, from Bath to his native North. She is symbolically and literally scrubbing what she believes is a dark, rust, maybe blood stain of the flagstones in the house her father in law, Francie, has built for her and his son Damien.

The clash of past and present, the spilling of blood onto stones which have already born witness to so much, is where the story proper starts, and as we get to know Sara and Mary, other voices begin to tell their tales.

Noreen and Joy, who were both represented as mother figures to Mary during her youth, also tell their tales of punishment, violence and ultimately, death at the hands of men who saw them, wanted them, and took them. The last narrator, Esther, is another child out of time, abandoned from circumstance and death, brought to bridge the gap between almost teenage Mary, and the worn out women these men , the three ‘Daddies’ , have kept hostage.

When the world was slowly retuning to itself in the post war period, the rural areas of the North Of Ireland, however, seem to remain untouched and run by their own set of rules where what goes on in the farms, remains there. People *kind of* know what is going on, but they do not look too far into the dark shadows of the barns for the truth of the women brought to live with Ivan, his sons George and Thomas (aka Tam).

It is here that Esther, a girl with no home, is brought on the pretence of being a housekeeper. Through her eyes, and Mary’s, we gradually become aware of the horror of their existence, and through Esther, we see the link between the then and the now. Esther’s fate is tied up with Mary’s which is tied up with Sara’s.

In Sara, Mary has fallen, literally, into her life at a time when both women need each other. Mary is running out of time, and feels the need to protect ‘the children’, those whose children, she cannot say. The sole survivor of a family massacre, and subsequently, a fire, she lives in a care home, the subject of village pity, misunderstanding, and an awkward co-existence .

Sara, ostensibly, has little to leave behind her in Bath and an-on paper at least-exciting future in this house where she might begin to start to live again, yet in her, Mary recognises a fear, one that is all too familiar, a woman trapped by a man. Her response to anyone reaching out to help her is ‘He hasn’t hit me,’ and this rings so very true it physically pains me to type about it. People always say ‘Why didn’t you leave?‘, re-victimising survivors of abusive relationships, and I feel it is easier for them to say that than to understand why they stayed. What is wonderfully, and eruditely explained through the novel is exactly the process of grooming, gaining and maintaining control, as well as the way in which we , to an extent, still see girls and women as conduits to a man’s goals whether it is to show off the having of a wife, ownership of woman or pro-creating.

The worst -and by that I mean the most affecting-parts of the novel are the ones which Stewart does not describe. He uses Mary’s voice to talk about what she can hear, the way they cover their ears from the abuse being perpetuated, the sense of tension which is engendered as you will Sara to escape, Mary to be listened to, and the children, wherever they are, to be found.

The novel is haunted, and haunting, it examines the way in which women were, and are seen as collateral and the ways in which the way they feel powerless is engendered to prevent them from escaping. And by using the vernacular in Mary’s sections, you really feel not only the sense of innocence, which paradoxically intensifies the emotions about the way the adults in her life behave, it reminds you of the place that she is in-geographically and socially. With Sara, Mary’s collision into her life is a wake up call which rings back over 60 years. Esther was the catalyst, her arrival brings the potential of hope which ripples through the hearts of Mary, Noreen and Joy, and then on down through to Sara.

Deeply moving, powerful and resonant with the most incredible, and formidable female characters, and villains you would happily hoist by their own petards ( by that I specifically refer to their sense of hubris, and also testicles) , Stewart has created an exemplary and  compelling narrative embedded in his native Ireland. Absolutely superb.

*As an aside, I kept being conscious of the use of ashes, thematically and literally throughout the book. Ashes seem to me to be emblematic of penance, the notion of ‘sack cloth and ashes‘, is the life Noreen, Joy and Mary live in as well as the ash trees around them, which gives the house it’s name. The ashes stain, and are difficult to remove and a human body can never, not really, be completely obliterated which always leaves some remains. It seems the punishment for being born female is to then try and wash away that mark, that stain, and therefore it feels. to the men in their lives, that their beatings, kidnapping and so forth are justified by that. It’s a bit of a stretch but I could not stop thinking about it*

About the author…

Stuart Neville’s debut novel, ‘The Twelve’ (published in the USA as ‘The Ghosts Of Belfast’), won the Mystery/Thriller category of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was picked as one of the top crime novels of 2009 by both the New York Times and the LA Times. He has been shortlisted for various awards, including the Barry, Macavity, Dilys awards, as well as the Irish Book Awards Crime Novel of the Year. He has since published three critically acclaimed sequels, ‘Collusion’, ‘Stolen Souls’ and ‘The Final Silence’.

His first four novels have each been longlisted for the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year, and ‘Ratlines’ was shortlisted for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger.

Stuart’s novels have been translated into various languages, including German, Japanese, Polish, Swedish, Greek and more. The French edition of The Ghosts of Belfast, Les Fantômes de Belfast, won Le Prix Mystère de la Critique du Meilleur Roman Étranger and Grand Prix du Roman Noir Étranger.

His fourth novel, Ratlines, about Nazis harboured by the Irish state following WWII is currently in development for television.

Links-http://www.stuartneville.com/

Twitter @StuartNeville @ZaffreBooks @Tr4cyF3nt0n