Title: The Dead House by Billy O’Callaghan
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Genre: Contemporary, Supernatural, Suspense
Length: 224 pages
Book Rating: C+
Complimentary Review Copy Provided by Publisher Through NetGalley
Summary:
Sometimes the past endures—and sometimes it never lets go.
This best-selling debut by an award-winning writer is both an eerie contemporary ghost story and a dread-inducing psychological thriller. Maggie is a successful young artist who has had bad luck with men. Her last put her in the hospital and, after she’s healed physically, left her needing to get out of London to heal mentally and find a place of quiet that will restore her creative spirit. On the rugged west coast of Ireland, perched on a wild cliff side, she spies the shell of a cottage that dates back to Great Famine and decides to buy it. When work on the house is done, she invites her dealer to come for the weekend to celebrate along with a couple of women friends, one of whom will become his wife. On the boozy last night, the other friend pulls out an Ouija board. What sinister thing they summon, once invited, will never go.
Ireland is a country haunted by its past. In Billy O’Callaghan’s hands, its terrible beauty becomes a force of inescapable horror that reaches far back in time, before the Famine, before Christianity, to a pagan place where nature and superstition are bound in an endless knot.
Review:
The Dead House by Billy O’Callaghan is a suspenseful novel with supernatural elements.
Nine years earlier, now retired art dealer Michael Simmons and his wife, Alison, attended a house warming party at client and friend Maggie Turner’s newly renovated cottage in Ireland. Also joining them is Liz, whose suggestion to mess around with a Ouija board eventually leads to some eerie and sinister happenings for Maggie and quite possibly, Michael and his family.
Maggie is an extraordinarily gifted artist whose abusive relationship leads to the discovery of the dilapidated cottage in the Irish countryside. Michael becomes very concerned about her after the housewarming party and what he discovers when he returns to the cottage greatly worries him. But with Maggie unwilling to leave her new home, Michael has no choice but to go back to his regular life. But are the things that happen to him and his family several years later related to the housewarming party?
Written from Michael’s point of view, the events that occur during Maggie’s housewarming party are revealed through flashbacks. The novel is a bit meandering with a little too much emphasis on things that do not really have much to do with the main storyline. While there are supernatural elements such as (possibly) ghostly sightings and a sinister presence conjured through the Ouija board, the main focus of the novel is Michael and his life. The ghost story falls flat and is not overly frightening since this part of the storyline is rather vague and lacking details.
The Dead House is a short novel with an interesting and imaginative storyline. Billy O’Callaghan’s descriptive prose brings the Irish countryside vibrantly to life. The supernatural aspect of the novel is intriguing but the abrupt and ambiguous conclusion might frustrate readers.
