The Dead House: A Novel

Maggie Turner is an artist in her very early twenties suffering the pangs of finding a painting style that is what she wants it to be. She also suffers from being “an avowed romantic,” often involving herself in one failed relationship after another. Her latest love affair lands her in the hospital, the victim of a “particularly brutal assault.” For her, recovery and starting anew means returning to Ireland where she once was as a girl and seeking “the solitude of the mountains and the sea.” Touring West Cork and the Beara Peninsula she finds the ideal place, a place that is “everything” to her where “even the air has wilderness” and she feels she is “collecting colours.” Spending her last dollar and borrowing money, Maggie sets about restoring “a wild, beautiful, isolated ruin” of a cottage “blessed with the kind of scenery artists often spend entire lifetimes searching for and never finding.” With every effort she makes to restore the ruin, she brings alive the past, but some things from the past are best left behind.THE DEAD HOUSE (2017; first North America edition 2018) is the debut novel of Irish writer Billy O’Callaghan. His prose is so beautifully written it is almost impossible to accept this is a debut novel until one realizes he is also the author of three previous short story collections, the third of which was honored as “the inaugural Short Story of the Year Award at the 2013 Bord Gáis Energy Irish Book Award and selected as Cork’s One City, One Book for 2017.”In many ways THE DEAD HOUSE borders upon the unique for a ghost story. A better example of “quiet” literary horror would be difficult to find. O’Callaghan’s prose is indescribably vivid and his descriptions of the craggy southwest Irish coast and backwoods areas near Allihies, filled with untamed vegetation and even an ancient, neglected (and shunned) druids’ stone circle are not only incredibly picturesque, but reflect a love for the Irish countryside which will have many readers ready to pack their bags as quickly as Maggie Turner does.Unlike most ghost stories, THE DEAD HOUSE is not set in an eerie mansion or on a huge estate with a dreadful history, but in a long-neglected “small tied cottage… that dated to pre-Famine times, late eighteenth or early nineteenth century at least, with a foundation that likely went back further.” Area locals know stories about the cottage and many believe “it’s not all just stories,” but for the most part the house appears to be more a thing of the past than a site of horrors. Its history comes from a period known as the Famine during which time crops failed, wildlife and even fish vanished, hundreds died of starvation, and some of the populace turned futilely to ancient pagan Irish gods and practices in search of succor.Narrated by a friend of Maggie’s, Michael Simmons, a great deal of THE DEAD HOUSE is as much a love story about Michael and the woman he marries, Alison, as it is a ghost story. There is no investigation of the house, no extended stay-overs by others in the house other than Maggie, and only an occasional fleeting glimpse of something out of the corner of a character’s eye. Much of the haunting which occupies the tale involves Maggie alone in her cottage “off stage.” Readers only gain occasional glimpses of the radical and harrowing changes which the young artist undergoes during visits by Michael and Alison or another friend.O’Callaghan’s really only inclusion of typical ghost story elements includes the isolation of Maggie’s cottage in the wilds and a rare evening with Maggie, Michael, Alison, and a friend, Liz who is a poet, utilizing a Ouija board for entertainment. In one of the novel’s most frightening portions, only too late do the friends realize they have taken the game too far, made a major mistake, and have allowed something to come through into the cottage which does not belong.O’Callaghan’s subtle approach to revealing his otherworldly series of events should not be mistaken for a nondescript horror novel, however. A chill in the air, a sense of the uninvited, the eerie, and matters of the grave and undead seep from the pages of THE DEAD HOUSE like fog moving in from the ocean. The conclusion of THE DEAD HOUSE which takes place nine years after the initial events with Maggie at the cottage at Allihes has a nagging sense of inescapable doom to it which is as effective, perhaps even more so, than out and out graphic descriptions of blood splattered, supernatural terror. Billy O’Callaghan’s celebrated mastery of storytelling in short story form makes for a most successful, satisfying, and creepy novel.

Billy O'Callaghan’s debut novella is literary horror in the vein of Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House set on the windswept shores of his native County Cork, where history is “a stew of fact and fable”. It is not the jump-in-your-seat horror that we have come to expect from movies but a slow-moving sense of dread that haunts your dreams and stays with you long after you have set it down. This kind of horror comes in large part from a deep drilldown into the hearts and minds of the story’s characters combined with a mysterious setting, something this prize-winning shanachie has nailed, deftly pulling the reader across oceans to a cottage on the shores of the Atlantic. “Here the world had simplified itself down to rocks, ocean, sky, wind and rain; these because everything else was fleeting, and you felt overwhelmed by such a sense of permanence all around, by the realisation that what you could see in any one moment and in any direction had always existed and always would. Holy men built monasteries in places like this, trying to capture part of the alchemy that coaxed time into standing still.”O'Callaghan’s tale is woven throughout with strands of Irish gods, Irish legends, and Irish history, but in essence, it is a ghost story and he uses his mastery of the storyteller’s art from the start to pull us out of our comfort zones by posing a simple question at the outset.”Do you believe in Ghosts?“Because that’s really where it begins, with belief. We glimpse or experience something that defies explanation and we either accept the stretch in our reality or we choose to turn our heads away. It’s a question that torments even philosophers: Do you believe? There is little about life as we have come to know it that can’t be explained away on some basic scientific level. Yet when the wind howls, and we find ourselves alone with only the yellow pool of a guttering candle to hold back the darkness, our instinct, perhaps our innate need for something above and beyond, still screams otherwise.”If this book has a flaw, it is one that is common for short story authors making the switch to novels. At times it seems as if there is not enough happening to justify the additional word count. It also seems to lack some of the resolution that readers of novels have come to expect. In the end, though, I see a lot of promise in this author’s work and look forward to reading more of his books.*Quotations are cited from an advanced reading copy and may not be the same as appears in the final published edition. The review was based on an advanced reading copy obtained at no cost from the publisher in exchange for an unbiased review. While this does take any ‘not worth what I paid for it’ statements out of my review, it otherwise has no impact on the content of my review.FYI: On a 5-point scale I assign stars based on my assessment of what the book needs in the way of improvements:*5 Stars – Nothing at all. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.*4 Stars – It could stand for a few tweaks here and there but it’s pretty good as it is.*3 Stars – A solid C grade. Some serious rewriting would be needed in order for this book to be considered great or memorable.*2 Stars – This book needs a lot of work. A good start would be to change the plot, the character development, the writing style and the ending.*1 Star – The only thing that would improve this book is a good bonfire.

I truly enjoyed reading this novel. Could not put it down from start finish. Keeps you intrigued. Everyone who enjoys a good mystery as well as a good ghost story.

No scares here.

Enjoyed the sheer grace of this mans writing style, as well as his unusual gift for atmospheric depiction. A first novel - rich ground for a sequel.

Great read.