'A terrifying story of ghosts and grief, perfect for fans of Shirley Jackon's The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James 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 tells the story of two siblings, Clara and Stephen, who are taken to stay in a remote house with their aunt and uncle after their mother becomes hospitalised. Unable to juggle the responsibilities of a sick wife, work, and two children, their father decides that it's best for the two children to spend a few weeks in the country, even though they've never met their mothers sister before.
Straight away there's a sense that there's something wrong in the house as soon as they get there, though this seems to be down to the fact that their aunt is a woman that whilst clearly very loving is very much set in her ways, and doesn't know how to interact with children. And this becomes the primary focus of the book, Clara and Stephen butting heads with their aunt repeatedly.
The blurb for the book book describes it as a story about ghosts, and whilst I don't want to spoil too much about the book I have to tell people that it's not; or at least not in the way that I was expecting. I was waiting for things to start going bump in the night, for strange presences to make themselves known, and otherworldly visions to appear. The book has none of these, and there's never really any involvement with the supernatural in this book at all. Instead, the ghosts of the blurb are definitely referring to the ghosts of the aunt's past, and how her own experiences are haunting her.
The book isn't dealing with spirits or spectres, but is instead a character study about a lonely and troubled woman and the madness that lies within her, caused by years of grief and loss. I would say that the book shows her descent into madness, but looking back at everything it's quite clear that the aunt was never fully sane, and the small 'eccentricities' from the first time we meet her were hinting at bigger things to come.
The horror of Such Pretty Things comes from people, it's horror that takes a look at the evil that people are capable of, even when they think that they're acting in a place of love. The book has some heavy themes of abuse and childhood trauma, and readers who have lived through an abusive childhood may find some of the events of the book upsetting; especially as the aunt unravels more and more over the course of events.
There are things that happen in Such Pretty Things that really put me on edge, and I found myself worried about the children more than once; and I kept urging Clara to try and do something, anything, to get out of the place. I wanted her to strike out, to physically fight back because I just somehow knew that things would get worse for them the longer they went on. I got really invested in these characters, and desperately wanted them to okay by the end.
I've not read any of Lisa Heathfield's other books before, but I'm aware that she normally writes in the Young Adult field, and that Such Pretty Things is her first foray into adult literature, and horror. For a first time writing in this field it's an impressively subtle horror. It's a book that doesn't rely on scares or the spooky to get under your skin, but instead relies on complex human characters to drive the horror.
Such Pretty Things is a book that creeped me out a lot, one that made me uncomfortable in a lot of ways, and that kept me on the edge of my seat. A very subtle and complex horror story.
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