This is the first time Clara has really left home or done anything on her own given the limitations that her disorder has caused in her life, so it’s partially a novel about Clara finding her way in the world and it’s also partially a Gothic mystery as Clara attempts to uncover the secrets of Shadowbrook manor.Īgain, this novel is quite the slow burn the mystery element isn’t even introduced until partway through you do spend quite a bit of time on Clara’s childhood and background. She becomes entranced with gardening and is eventually summoned to a manor in Gloucestershire with the task of curating a private greenhouse for the eccentric, frequently absent owner. Sort of a slow burn coming of age story à la Jane Eyre meets a modernized Gothic horror novel like The Silent Companions, House of Glass follows Clara, a young woman with osteogenesis imperfecta living in London with her stepfather in the wake of her mother’s death in 1914. Fans of Laura Purcell and Sarah Waters, get on this! Correct me if I’m wrong but I don’t think this book ever got a US publisher it’s a shame, as there is certainly a huge market for this kind of atmospheric British historical fiction over here - a market that is indeed so oversaturated that it’s only natural for some real gems like this to slip through the cracks. (Aug.Callum brought House of Glass to my attention ages ago and now that I’ve finally read it, I have to echo his recommendation and add my own disbelief that this book has flown so under the radar. Overall, there's an air of self-importance that's difficult to penetrate. Largely told from the perspective of a fledgling adult reflecting on her childhood, the story feels like an extended therapy session, with narration alternating between third- and first-person, allowing a dissociation between the grown Moira and her lonely, moody adolescent self. Now she would like to make amends with her sister, but it is too late. Instead, she ignored her family and later married Ray, an artist and doting husband.
The accident is made more tragic because Moira, who was away at boarding school when her sister was born, took the new addition to the family as a personal slight and never developed a relationship with her. Moira is a 27-year-old scientist whose 16-year-old sister, Amy, is in a coma, the result of a fall four years earlier. Regret and jealousy consume the overweening protagonist of this frustrating novel by the Whitbread-winning author of Eve Green
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