Book Review: ‘The House of Ashes’ by Stuart Neville

Title: The House of Ashes

Author: Stuart Neville

Publisher: Zaffre

Publication Date: 2022

CONTENT WARNING: ‘The House of Ashes’ contains scenes of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse.

The House of Ashes is horror novel written by Irish author Stuart Neville. The book features a dual narrative which splits the story between past and present.

In the present, Sara has just married the man of her dreams…only to realise she is trapped in a nightmare. At her husband’s insistence, the pair move to a grand converted farmhouse in Ireland. With no friends or family in this new country, Sara becomes obsessed with finding out the truth about what really happened in the house 50 years ago. At the same time she must find a way out of her controlling and abusive marriage while evading the growing wrath of her husband and father-in-law.

In the past, as far as the villagers are concerned the farmhouse is run by a perfectly ordinary man and his two sons. No one knows about the two women – used, abused, and imprisoned in the basement – or their illegitimate daughter Mary. As Mary becomes a teenager she starts to question why her life is the way it is. With the house’s hierarchy challenged there can only be one bloody outcome.

It is worth stating that The House of Ashes and it’s disturbing subject matter are not for the faint-hearted. Neville has created a story that is intentionally harrowing and uncomfortable to read. It is a book that you both want to stop reading and can’t put down at the same time.

In books with a plot that is divided between more than one time period, there is normally a degree of mystery and uncertainty with the present day narrative only hinting at what may have happened in the past before the big reveal at the end of novel. The House of Ashes is unusual because Sara’s present day investigations reveal exactly what happened in Mary’s timeline and which characters survive. Instead the mystery isn’t what happened but how it happened.

Oddly, despite the fact that I knew exactly how Mary’s story ended, I still found hers the more compelling of the two narratives. The difference is that Mary’s chapters felt like a complete story that could hold up on their own. If hers were the only chapters in the book I would still find it engaging. By contrast the present day chapters relied heavily on Sara’s investigation into the past to push the story forward. Without this past element, Sara’s chapters unfortunately didn’t have as much substance to them – which is why I always looked forward to Mary’s chapters more.

The House of Ashes is a disturbing yet thrilling novel that focuses on two innocent lives as they struggle against the very worst of humanity. It’s not a book that I could comfortably read over and over but the story was definitely a powerful one.

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