The Inhabitants, a novel that takes place in a Gothic house, is a strange, eerie read. The action feels as if it were happening in another room, behind a velvet curtain. 

The story follows artist and single mother Nilda Ricci, who inherits from her own mother a Victorian mansion rumoured to have been built by an architect whose houses were said to influence the mind in beneficial ways. For instance, the mansion contains rooms with “little windows, near the level of the floor […] Lying down by one of these windows, and contemplating the world beyond it, could soothe a troubled mind or soul.”

Nilda’s new home initially brings her luck, with the appearance of a longtime housekeeper and the support of a handsome neighbour, a chemist named Graham whose herbal tonics seem to boost her creativity. As Nilda settles in, however, she begins to experience strange phenomena that raise disturbing questions. She becomes suspicious of her neighbour and housekeeper, suspecting that they may be hiding secrets of their own. Is Graham poisoning her with his herbal drinks? Is Nilda’s daughter, Sidney, becoming possessed by the ghost of a young boy who met a sticky end in the woods? After Nilda’s college friend, Toni, reveals being sexually abused by a teacher, can Nilda wreak revenge by painting a portrait that exposes his predatory actions towards other young girls?

The narrative has a plethora of elements: a subplot of #MeToo, odd supernatural events, not to mention the too-good-to-be-true housekeeper who works for nothing at strange hours of the day. The spirit of Nilda’s mother, herself an artist, is a tangible presence too, as she seems to be sending Nilda messages through the supernatural movement of her sculptures. In one eerie instance, “[s]hards of green glass, scattered across the floor in front of her mother’s sculpture. Was the shattering a message from her? A warning?” 

The construction itself is part of the story and its opacity. The evocatively-described Gothic architecture is echoed in the novel’s structure. Labyrinthine corridors, twisting  passages and secret rooms, vaulting ceilings and eye-like windows that fail to relieve the interior dimness—all these elements all deepen the atmosphere of disorientation and unease.  

But the telling is chaotic; nothing is ever fully exposed or explained. The book’s several denouements—the unmasking of the abuser, the escape from Graham, and the possible possession of her daughter by an imaginary friend—happen almost at a remove. It is never entirely clear what is real and what imagined, dreamed. The Inhabitants is a strangely misty and occasionally impenetrable affair, full of mystery, past darkness, odd phenomena, and secrets uncovered. This dark summer novel is a perfect cooling counterpoint to the bright heat of a sunny day.

+++

Beth Castrodale is the author of the novels Marion Hatley, which was a finalist for a Nilsen Prize for a First Novel from Southeast Missouri State University Press; In This Ground,  an excerpt from which was a shortlist finalist for a William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Award; and I Mean You No Harm. She is also the recipient of an artist grant from the Mass Cultural Council.

+

Educated in the West Indies, Saudi Arabia, Scotland and Belgium, Elizabeth Smith studied modern languages at Durham University in England. She reads anything she can, especially pre-war books by obscure women and modern European writers. She lives in an old house on a small island where she often pretends it is 1936.