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Charis Cotter delivers the spookiness in latest novel

JOAN SULLIVAN saltwire.com @saltwirenetwork Joan Sullivan is editor of Newfoundland Quarterly magazine. She reviews both fiction and non-fiction for The Telegram.

Charis Cotter knows spooky — according to her bio she grew up next to a cemetery — so no wonder there’s an unsettling scrim of ghostliness over this story. At the same time, she knows how to anchor young adult fiction — for example, food is always important (tuna sandwiches, lemonade, oatmeal cookies). And no matter how supernatural happenings get, the story remains character-driven, we don’t lose sight of our heroine amongst the phantoms.

That would be Alice Felicity Greene. She has the perfect summer planned. First, two weeks at a cottage with her mother, Ellie, and her father, Stephen. It’s a rare family time — she’s even gotten out of school early. Following this will be days of swimming, reading library books, and hanging with her besties in the city. She’s imagined it so often it seems real.

But Alice often imagines things so much they seem real.

“The problem is that this kind of thing happens to me all the time. Every day. I always have stories running in my mind, some good, some bad. I try to stop myself when I get started on a bad one, but it’s hard to put on the brakes. I get caught up in it before I realize what’s happening.”

For example, she can’t help picturing some conflict erupting between her parents. And then, “charging happily into the kitchen, bubbling over with that fizzy school’s-over feeling, I ran smack into a big fight.”

Stephen, an architect, has once again let work overtake family commitments, and he’s just told his wife he’s needed in L.A. And Ellie, a nurse, has had it. She cancels the cottage rental, takes a short-term posting to look after a patient named Mrs. Bishop, and before Alice can start to absorb the upheaval, she and her mom are on a train to Lakewood.

Even before they arrive, there’s more trouble. After several hours travelling, the “train seemed to have picked up speed, swaying from side to side. It gave a sudden lurch, then kept barrelling forward.” Her mother’s reassurances aside, Alice fears there’s going to be a crash, and then comes “a tremendous screech, the train came to a sudden grinding halt, and I slammed forward into the seat in front of me.”

The event is frightening, but it doesn’t appear to be serious. Ellie, though, is concerned that Alice might have a concussion. They need to get settled into their new situation, where Alice can have some rest and quiet.

A slightly ominous cab ride later (“’So you’re going to the Blackwood House,’ said the taxi driver. ‘Rather you than me.’”) they’ve arrived, and been greeted by the housekeeper, Mary Barnett, and her daughter, Lily. Mary is welcoming and talkative; Lilly, though a few years older than Alice, somewhat childlike — she’s left a special doll in Alice’s bedroom, which is huge and beautifully appointed with old-fashioned décor, including a four-poster bed and window seats.

The whole house is like that, elegant and even luxurious, but also oddly dated and untouched.

Mrs. Bishop has a reputation for being exacting — the previous nurse was fired for smiling too much. But as Alice discovers she does have a sense of humour, as well as an intriguing past as a journalist. That information, though, only emerges after Alice has made a disagreeable first impression, screaming the house down when she awakens from a nightmare on her first night.

At least she thinks it was a bad dream — a red-haired, green-eyed girl in her bed, asking “Is it time to wake up?”

Was she asleep? Is she conscious now? How can she tell? Her head injury

“The problem is that this kind of thing happens to me all the time. Every day. I always have stories running in my mind, some good, some bad. I try to stop myself when I get started on a bad one, but it’s hard to put on the brakes. I get caught up in it before I realize what’s happening.” Felicity Greene

makes her drowsy, and sensitive to light, and layers everything with an air of unreality. Still it does nothing to damper her natural curiosity. Alice suspects the house, with its hidden rooms and locked doors, holds secrets. Which she’s determined to discover, with Lily as eager assistant. On the pretence of an afternoon swimming outing, they sneak back into the house and up into the tower attic. There they find a dollhouse, intricately detailed and almost identical to the current house. And inside it are some dolls.

These represent the people Alice has continued to dream about, if dreaming is the correct term: Fizz, her sister Bubble, their mother Harriet, and Mr. Inwood, who originally designed the dollhouse. Tandem to these occurrences, Alice tries to confirm the relationship of the dollhouse to the real house: do manipulations in one realm affect the characters and activities in another? Do imagined shortbreads become a doll’s pretend cookies? Can a real dog turn up as a toy? And it’s not just the physical placement of objects, but the emotional and psychological connections between the people.

And their fates. Meanwhile, Alice’s nights continue to be interrupted, her days steeped in over-long naps, and through it all she ponders and worries what will happen to her and her family. Awake or asleep, Alice has problems to solve, and they all seem to be growing bigger than her strength and abilities can bear.

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2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

2021-10-16T07:00:00.0000000Z

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