How might a love letter to the gothic genre look? It might, first, be in the novel form: nothing less would capture its grandiose themes, its dark and brooding atmosphere. Then, there must be a house. Not just any house will do. You know the type: a tangle of rust-covered metal gates and fence, and behind them a jagged, dark marvel of Gothic Revival architecture, “like a vast animal from its den: a gabled spine, wings of pale stone, a tower with a single amber eye. Steep steps curl like a tail around its feet.” (Harrow, 18). And within this house? The tortured and self-denying ways of the novel’s–the genre’s–protagonists, your Heathchliffs and Elizabeths and Frankensteins and their Creatures. Driven, tragic heroes–most often driven towards their own destruction.
Judge Alix E. Harrow’s latest novel by these measures, and you will find Starling House a laudable work, a gothic novel well worth reading. It’s Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights that the book gives homage to, in ways explicit and implicit. A few examples of the latter: Starling House feels as remote from the town of Eden, Kentucky, as the Wuthering Heights felt from whatever nameless, fictional town Brontë decided to situate her novel near, both places eery and the source of curiosity and fright alike (i.e. they give off creepy vibes). There’s the naming convention: both novels carry the names of their central locales, of course. Gothic protagonists are not the pretty boys of teen vampire fiction; Heathcliff was never a looker, Arthur is described by one supporting character as a “big scarecrow” (223). As for explicit references, main character Opal enjoys her gothic reads; Arthur, the male lead of Starling House, eventually ends up under ‘Heathcliff’ on her phone.
There are other elements that you’ll inevitably find–I read Wuthering Heights two years ago, and it’s not the freshest novel in my mind, so I’m certain I overlooked a fair few callbacks. It’s important to note that while Harrow’s gothic novel shows nothing but love to Bronte’s genre-defying work, Starling House is not mapped onto it. Francine Prose defined for the NYRB some of Wuthering Heights‘s strongest suits, namely “its wild originality, its immensely intricate narrative structure, its hyper-romanticism masquerading as naturalism, the dialogue that makes its characters seem always to be shouting even when they are conversing”. These traits are not the traits you’ll find in Harrow’s novel; its structure isn’t going to startle you with its originality; the fantasy gothic is not reinvented in some miraculous way. Nor need it be.
This isn’t only a love letter to the gothic genre, it’s also an Alix E. Harrow novel. If you’ve read The Ten Thousand Doors of January or The Once and Future Witches, you know exactly what that means. If not, I’ll tell you: a deep and abiding interest in the power of stories, in their plurality, in the polyphony of different versions of a central story or motif. Here, this polyphony relates to the various stories told about Starling House’s origins: horror stories and tales of emancipation, wrongs righted only half-way but still lingering all the way to the present.
Some don’t like the switch between first- and third-person points of view; I loved this particular choice. Opal’s perspective takes prime place: she is a thief and a liar, forced into both roles for the sake not only of herself but of her younger brother Jasper. Eden has taken her mother, has denied her opportunities freely given to those in the town who have more normal lives, families, support networks.
Opal’s a bit of an idiot to begin with, which makes her growth so much more satisfying. I don’t mean here the annoying, insufferable kind of character that you won’t be able to stand. Rather, Opal’s a bit of an idiot like anyone who’s ever lived is a bit of an idiot – she takes too much on her shoulders, tries to hold together the weight of two lives–her own and Jasper’s–without asking for help or discussing her plans with anyone else. She’s wilful, driven, doing the best she can in an incredibly difficult situation. Her reactions to the uncanny circumstances she finds herself in are relatable, and she has a wryness and a wittiness about her that make her point of view sections a joy to read. This citation, for example, from a conversation with a co-worker:
Lacey’s mouth bends in a glossy bow. “That’s not funny. My meemaw says there were two Starlings living there back in her day, a pair of women.” Her voice lowers, bowing beneath the weight of implication. “Neither of them ever married.” I would like to ask Lacey’s meemaw if she’d considered the quality of potential husbands available in Muhlenberg County, but I suppose, given the existence of Lacey, that she must have made certain compromises. (28)
Arthur is the Warden of Starling House, fighting shadows and Beasts of uncertain origins. He appears as brooding and melancholy as Heathcliff; despite initial appearances, he and Opal have an awful lot in common. Both characters are driven by goals they will not be dissuaded from and both characters go through narrative arcs that force them to come to grips with the limits of what they can achieve alone. Opal’s purpose is to make sure that Jasper doesn’t end up stuck in Eden; Arthur’s is that he will be the last Warden of the House. How their paths cross, and how well they succeed at these goals, I’ll leave to the reader to find out.
What of Eden, Kentucky, itself? The tried and tested irony of naming a location Eden and proceeding to make it anything but is always appreciated. Its story is profoundly American, another township with a once-glamorous history exploited to the brink, its citizens now the victims of precarious and constant economic risk. As unreal, as gothic as Starling House itself is, Eden is tangible: just another locale in the USA’s Rust Belt, decimated by deindustrialisation and the running out of coal. Its people hate the local corporation that has brought them to this ruin–Gravely Power–and need the jobs and businesses it keeps on life support if they are to avoid worse ruin yet. And this, too, strikes me as something characteristic for Alix Harrow’s work – it’s timely, reflects issues in the world beyond its covers with awareness and sympathy. The members of her supporting cast reveal themselves as more than stock characters: Bev, the grouchy motel keeper who lets Opal and Jasper live in room 12 rent-free, is more than the tobacco-chewing curmudgeon Opal initially introduces her as. Opal herself, in the daily drudgery for survival, has forgotten some of that. The novel allows her (and the reader) to see people anew, to create new connections, to revisit and reconceptualise old ones.
Allow me a final return to the most emblematic gothic element of this fantasy novel: Starling House is alive. It contains multitudes within itself: dreams, feelings, nostalgic memories, and mysteries most of all. These mysteries go deep and range far in time and space; the untangling of them by Opal is the novel’s greatest joy. The house is a storied space, in so many ways. As significant as Opal and Arthur are, its constant presence overshadows even the two of them. It certainly overwhelms:
The surface is scarred and stained; it’s only up close that I see there are tiny shapes carved roughly into the wood. Hundreds of them—horseshoes and crooked crosses and open eyes, spirals and circles and malformed hands that run in long rows like hieroglyphs, or lines of code. Some of them I almost recognize from Mom’s tarot decks and astrology charts, but most of them are unfamiliar, like letters from an alphabet I don’t know. There’s a derangement to them, a desperation that tells me I should leave before I wind up ritually beheaded or sacrificed on a stone altar in the basement. (21)
Hell of a first impression, House. And it only gets better from there, with the complex relationship that Starling House develops with Opal, with the even more complex emotions between it and Arthur, with every sad creak and joyous flap of a curtain. Explore this space at your own pace–but do give it the time of day. Especially if the gothic genre speaks to you.
You’ll enjoy Starling House by Alix E. Harrow if:
- You read and enjoy gothic literature. Did Wuthering Heights twist up your silly lil heart and romantic expectations? Good news – the heart-twisting fun continues here!
- You loved Harrow’s previous work: the accent on stories and their power continues to be an ever-present pole in her writing, and, folks, it is a delight;
- You have a thing for scarecrow boys and crooked girls in contentious, fun relationships – just think of the shipping potential!
- SPOOKY HOUSE!
- And plenty more! Prob’ly.
Tor’s printed International edition is a good example of a finely printed book, a paperback worth owning and treasuring. The paper is pleasant to the touch, and the font’s size makes for a more economical layout–while still immensely legible. If this were a Gollancz publication, it might’ve easily been a hundred and fifty pages longer; this edition closes at three hundred and eight pages. As someone without any space for books at this point, I appreciate these particular aspects of the paperback.
The Grimoire Reliquary 
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