It’s getting close to spooky season, and since I happened to read a few thrilling stories over the summer, let’s get in the mood! This week, we’re reviewing Jess Armstrong’s The Curse of Penryth Hall.
What drew me most to this book was its setting in post-war England, especially since that is when my own work in progress is set. Of course, the promise of an enticing mystery didn’t hurt.
I had heard The Last Heir to Blackwood Library compared to this novel, so I hoped I would be indulged in an atmospheric tale which promised to creep me out just enough I didn’t completely lose my nerve and stop reading. (Have I ever mentioned I scare easily? Abbott and Costello films were enough to freak me out when I was in high school.)
Thankfully, it did.
In fact, I would say Blackwood Library was spookier than Penryth Hall, but that might be because there was a sentient library involved. Penryth is simply a delicious and awful and bloody murder. Several murders.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t some excellent twists and turns in the maze of Cornish idiosyncrasies and old aristocratic family histories. There were moments some of these even had me doubting my own suspicions and second guessing my prediction of who-done-it.
What I liked most was the setting. The lush Cornish southlands of mother England did indeed provide an excellent atmosphere which enticed the senses of both the main character as much as the reader. It is no wonder why so many original mystery novelists like Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle would use their dark coastlands for some of their own settings. Come to think of it, Penryth Hall is extremely similar to Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca.
That said, I found the main character, Ruby, a little obnoxious. Again, this is not a slight against the writing of the author. Armstrong wrote an excellent mystery. My subjective tastes, though, did not find her main character all that appealing. I can’t put my finger on why, so just know that it is purely that aforementioned subjectivity. I didn’t click with her.
The love interest, however, I did like. He was different than most in that he wasn’t stereotypically brooding (that was left to Ruby) nor was there any forbidden attraction between the pair. Rather, he was more the golden hearted boy-next-door whose only goal is to care for his village and the people he loves with a fierce desire to protect them all from whatever evil plagues their village.
Ultimately, along with its creepy undertones, The Curse of Penryth Hall is woefully tragic. At its core, it is a story about grief and how various people within the village, and the main character herself, either struggle, cope, or reconcile with their grief especially after the atrocities of the Great War which changed all of their lives forever. (Maybe that’s why Ruby annoyed me: It was how she avoided her grief. Maybe it reminded me of myself?)
Once you understand that, The Curse of Penryth Hall becomes more than a dark and twisted mystery, but a tragically beautiful and poignant story.
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