'Argentina, winter 1913. Ursula Kelp, a young English gardener, travels to Buenos Aires to take up the role of head gardener at a long-abandoned estate in the Pampas. The current owner wishes to return to the estate with his family and restore the once-famous gardens to their former glory.
'Travelling deep into the Pampas, the vast grasslands of South America, Ursula arrives to warnings from the locals that the estate is haunted, cursed to bring tragedy to the founding family of Las Lágrimas. And soon Ursula believes that her loneliness is making her imagine things – the sound of footsteps outside her bedroom door, the touch of hands on her shoulders when there’s no one there. Most strangely of all, she keeps hearing the frenzied sound of a man chopping down trees in the nearby forest with an axe, when all her staff are in sight.
'As the strange occurrences intensify – with tragic consequences – Ursula questions if there’s truth in the rumours about the cursed estate. The family’s return is imminent – are they in danger? And the longer Ursula stays at the estate, the more she realises that she too is in mortal danger.'
I love a good Gothic ghost story, tales with spooky, remote locations, creepy old houses, and buried history that the hero needs to uncover. These kinds of elements are great even on their own, but when a book has all of these things they just feel extra special. And The Haunting of Las Lágrimas has all of this in spades.
Our story begins after the events of Las Lágrimas, with our protagonist, Ursula, writing about her experiences from the safety of The Hotel Bristol in Mar del Plata. Straight away we know that something terrible is to come in this book. Yes, Ursula herself might be alive, she may get in the end, but we meet her as a woman plagued by nightmares, afraid of leaving her hotel room, and dealing with the trauma of what she went through. This instantly builds tension, before we've even begun to get into the true heart of the book; and is a perfect way to start this kind of slow burn horror novel.
Writing down her experiences, in order to put her thought in order and expel some of her demons, Ursula begins to outline her story. We begin with Ursula, a gardener from England who has travelled across the world to Argentina in order to escape her oppressive family and connect more with her lost grandfather, working as one of the staff for the wealthy Houghton family, and whilst the family treats her well, more like a peer than a member of staff, she wants something more challenging. As such, when she overhears a visitor talking to the head gardener about a job opening she approaches him about it.
The man, named Moyano, turns out to be the estate manager for the distant Las Lágrimas, a home built in the wilderness of the pampas, that is in the process of being restored and rebuilt before the owner, Don Paquito Agramonte, and his family move in. He tells Ursula that the estate is extremely remote, and the garden in huge disrepair. It's a task that no other gardener will take on, and that will test her skills and resolve to the limit. Desperate for a chance to prove herself, Ursula jumps at the offer and immediately sets out for Las Lágrimas.
After a two day journey via train and horseback ride, Usrula finally arrives at the remote estate. Moyano, it seems, was underselling the enormity of the work, and Usula finds herself in charge of two young workers, facing a huge walled garden that is full of weeds and brambles. Knowing that clearing the garden alone could take weeks, but that she has to have something worthy of showing Don Agramonte when he arrives, she sets out to do what she can.
However, as the days begin to go by Urusla starts to experience strange things at Las Lágrimas. The old house feels strange and oppressive, and the nights alone in her room are long and frightening. The few staff that are there whisper stories about hauntings, and refuse to divulge their secrets. She feels like she's constantly being watched, and starts to hear the sound of someone chopping down trees in the surrounding woodland. But strangest of all, parts of the garden seem to change on their own, reverting back to their original, restored state overnight, without anyone having done the work.
Despite being determined to make the garden ready, and knowing that it will take all of her tie, Ursula begins to find herself being drawn deeper into the mystery of Las Lágrimas, searching for an explanation for the strange events. But will her efforts stir up further trouble for her from both her living employers, and the spirits that make Las Lágrimas their home?
One of the ways in which The Haunting of Las Lágrimas really excels is in atmosphere. As soon as Ursula sets out for Las Lágrimas things start to take a turn, and you find yourself on edge. On her journey to the estate we learn some of the history of the place, the rumours of the hauntings, and we begin to understand the remoteness of the location. The estate itself seems to sit in the middle of nowhere, days journey from the nearest settlement, surrounded by endless grassland, dark forest, and ominous skies. The way Ursula describes it in her journal really does transport you there, and you can begin to see why it soon starts to prey upon her mind.
The estate itself is as much a character as any of the principal players in this story too, and its dark and draughty halls and overgrown gardens feel both vast and lonely, and overwhelmingly oppressive at the same time. Ursula often finds herself walking through the halls of the estate alone, listening to the silence around her, feeling the cold creeping in. Her one place of solace, her bedroom, often seems to be the focus of a strange, unseen visitor too, with strange noises just outside her door, and a horrible chill trying to get inside. It feels like there's nowhere for Ursula to get away from the dark forces always lying just out of sight.
Even the garden, a place where she can pour all of her focus and energy, a place that should make her feel at peace shifts and changes over time. It seems to slowly turn upon her, with unseen eyes on her back, strange sounds coming from round the corner, and even in the middle of the day it can feel like one of the most frightening places on earth.
W.M. Cleese seems to know how to build this tension throughout the book, and does so masterfully. Las Lágrimas is unsettling at first, but only because its an old building, a place in disrepair and in a remote location. But as the story progresses it starts to change, to become sinister in its own right. Cleese is able to increase the unease at such a slow rate that you don't even realise that it's being done, until both Ursula and the reader reach such a point that you never feel like you can let your guard down, and that nowhere in Las Lágrimas can provide safe shelter.
The fact that Las Lágrimas is so remote, and that Ursula doesn't know the way back to civilisation, means that this is one of those kinds of stories where you're not left shouting 'why don't you just leave?' at the protagonist. Usula has no choice but to stay and face the haunting. As such, she's forced to call upon wells of personal strength that she doesn't even know she has, forging ahead even when she wants to do the exact opposite. Because of this she comes across as a very strong and capable woman, doubly so due to the time the book's set. This is a time and place where women aren't treated with respect or given positions of authority, and Ursula is used to having to prove herself to others. She has a level of inner strength and confidence that not many others in the book possess.
I had a lot of fun reading The Haunting of Las Lágrimas, times where I couldn't put the book down because I was desperate to find out what would happen next, what piece of the mystery that Urusla was going to uncover; but there were also times where I found myself drawing my blanket in close and casting nervous glances towards the darkened corners of the room because the sense of horror was getting to me so much. I'm sure that there will be some people who will say that the book is a little slow, that there isn't enough 'in-your-face' horror going on to be scary, but the constant building dread, the sense of unease and fear that just went on and on were so much more frightening than I was expecting. If you enjoy scary mysteries, strong female protagonists, remote, Gothic locations, and spooky happenings, this is a book you're definitely going to want to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment