The House at Midnight
by Lucie Whitehouse

Release Date: 7th Jan 2008
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978 0 7475 9030 9
RRP: £12.99

I may be losing my touch with contemporary literature, but this is one of the most unusual debut novels I have ever come across. The plot is narrow, restricted to a set period of time and confined to the immediate lives of a small group of friends. But don’t let that fool you... what follows is nothing short of bewitching. Whitehouse creates an intimate atmosphere in which we are granted voyeuristic access to the most tender and vulnerable moments of those select few in the group.

It doesn’t sound like much of a storyline, but believe me, this will take its hold on you and drag you to the end with your nerves jangling and your mind aching to realise the end... above all, one can empathise and relate to most of the characters – their natures being akin to modern-day waxworks – incredibly lifelike to the point where you swear you can see them breathe...

Jo is your average, ordinary nearly-thirty woman stuck in a rut. Having secretly yearned for a relationship beyond the ten-year-long friendship she has with Lucas, when he suddenly inherits a rather ostentatious country pile in the middle of nowhere, suddenly the stalemate of their relationship changes – and so does he. Jo becomes convinced it is the house, which plays an eerie background part throughout. Whitehouse imbues life into the inanimate through the paranoia and obsessions of the friends as they begin to spend more and more time at the house. Slowly every friendship is challenged and changing in an unstoppable and unrelenting way. With an exceptionally hot summer, the heat seems to let the past rise up out of the depths and gradually take over.

The House at Midnight has been described as a “coming of age”, and I could well see them all as teenagers scrabbling around in the dark trying desperately to find their way and discovering that sometimes we can outgrow even the most staid of friendships, were it not for the copious amounts of drink and sex going on... call me old-fashioned... This is a story of lust, the kind of obsessional lust that can unhinge the human mind. It is a story of history repeating itself in a house seeped in dark secrets and betrayal. It is also a close look at how group dynamics can alter in an instant, how money changes people and how machiavellian qualities can be amplified into something sinister given the wrong circumstances.

An extraordinary debut of considerable power and stamina, once hooked you will not be able to leave until the end. A thoroughly satisfying read.

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