Think of it! Stumbling on a person you weren’t expecting, then realising it’s not a person. Silent companions could not be more perfect for horror. The wealthy Dutch liked to place around their houses for general amusement and trickery: because of the poor lighting of houses at the time, a guest running into them might well believe, at first, they were real people, and/or briefly die from fright. “Silent companions”, then, were a kind of painting-sculpture hybrid, popular in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century–made out of a piece of flat wood in the shape of a person, they were realistic depictions of men, women, and children. But I realise that spoiler preferences are personal, and that is why I am warning you. And it’s not like this is a big mystery in the book–Elsie figures out pretty quickly what it is that’s stalking her along The Bridge’s corridors. Personally, I would have benefited from knowing in advance, as I had some initial trouble visualising them. I don’t think this constitutes a spoiler, but if you want to dive into this book blind, be warned that, in the next paragraph, I will explain what the titular silent companions actually are. The Silent Companions is one of the creepiest books I have ever read. Her first night there, she is woken up by a strange hissing noise, which seems to be coming from the attic… what, or who, lies on the other side? Starting with when she first moved, newly widowed and pregnant, into her husband’s ancestral mansion in rural England, The Bridge. So he gives her pencil and paper, and she starts writing. Could Elsie have killed them? Could she have set the fire? A sympathetic doctor must get her side of the story, but Elsie has lost the power of speech. And where, before the fire, four people died under mysterious circumstances. The home that the inhabitants of the nearest village keep well away from.
She’s barely survived the fire that destroyed her home of the last several months. Elsie Bainbridge is a patient at St Joseph’s Hospital for the Insane.
0 kommentar(er)
