House of Splinters by Laura Purcell

Laura Purcell burst onto the literary scene in 2018 with her creepily effective debut The Silent Companions. This was pitch-perfect gothic horror – with all of the elements of that genre – an old house, an ancient curse, a creepy village, a pregnant heroine. And added to that the most disturbing element of all – the titular silent companions: wooden likenesses of people that seemed to move on their own and had malevolence to burn. Purcell has since stayed in the gothic realm, delivering a series of standalone creepy tales. But you can’t keep a good idea down and nine years later she returns to the world of The Silent Companions with a prequel – House of Splinters.

House of Splinters is set over a hundred years before The Silent Companions and tells the story of Belinda, who has married into the ancient Bainbridge clan. When her father-in-law dies (in somewhat mysterious circumstances), her husband Wilfred decides that Belinda (now pregnant) and five-year-old Freddy will move from London to the family estate, a slightly dilapidated pile called The Bridge. They soon find that the local village is against them due to well progressed plans to enclose the public land. And then there are, of course, the silent companions, which seem to appear out of nowhere and which Freddy takes a liking to. But it is only after Belinda gives birth to her daughter Lydia and Wilfred’s brother Nathan turns up and confirms her suspicions about the house being haunted and the family cursed, that things seem to get completely out of control.

Much like the Weeping Angels in Doctor Who, the silent companions are a really effective evil force. They are completely motionless and yet seem to be able to move when you are not looking at them, they represent people who lived in the house in the past, and it appears to those who see them that their expressions can change. Purcell manages to ensure that this second outing for them does not feel at all forced, tied as it is to a different story and set of characters.

Purcell manages to deploy all of the usual creepy elements – surly servants, hints of witchcraft, and things that go bump in the night – with a much more disturbingly human story of family secrets and tragedy. So that overall, House of Splinters Purcell is another great, often disturbing, gothic novel.

House of Splinters by Laura Purcell

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8.0/10