House of Small Shadows by Adam Nevill: Gothic Horror of Weird Taxidermy and Creepy Artefacts

Young auctioneer, Catherine is about to start a new life working for Osberne’s Valuers and wants to prove her worth by inspecting the collections of now dead mad genius M H Mason. His niece, Edith, now in her nineties, is the sole heir at the Red House.

But Catherine has a past she wants buried. We glimpse unsettling memories of Ellyll Field, of her childhood, also known as the Hell. And we also learn about the disastrous end to her TV career, due to a bullying boss.

Gothic Horror

But Catherine is about to face her biggest challenge yet. Old Edith is anything but a pushover as she takes Catherine on a nightmare tour of her uncle’s horrible collection of nasty taxidermy and creepy old doll’s faces with eerie gazes. Nevill throws in some sinister imagery of Seventies Britain of child abductions and unsettling lullabies of ice cream vans that leaves an unsavoury taste in the mouth. Catherine soon sees a connection between her childhood ‘hell’ and the Red House.

Nevill has a writing style to rival Stephen King – his descriptions of horrors within the Red House are truly chilling and I relished some of the descriptions. But the climax of the story seemed to go on too long, and Catherine was too much a victim of circumstances, without a will of her own.

It is evident that Catherine undergoes a prolonged mental breakdown in the final scenes, but not knowing what was real left many questions unanswered. I felt the story could have been tightened and scenes cut without affecting the story.