Seventeen-year-old Maud Ruthyn lives in sheltered isolation with her father, a wealthy and reclusive Swedenborgian. When he dies, his will places her under the guardianship of his estranged brother Silas, a man long whispered to have killed a guest in a locked room. Maud is sent to the decaying estate of Bartram-Haugh, where her uncle's charm, his opium habit, a sinister French governess named Madame de la Rougierre and a scheming cousin close in around her inheritance. Le Fanu builds a Victorian gothic of locked doors, dread and slow-tightening menace.
Anyone who likes nineteenth-century sensation fiction, haunted-house atmosphere without actual ghosts, or Wilkie Collins and early Daphne du Maurier will find a model here. It rewards patient readers with a long, creeping suspense, a vulnerable narrator and a villain whose politeness is the scariest thing about him.
Balanced in tone; a moderate read.
Best for readers like The Curious Generalist. Which reader are you?
- Published
- 1864
- Language
- EN
