This is a great gothic novel by Laura Purcell in the style of Sarah Water's The Little Stranger in that the principle character is a house, in this case The Bridge, family home of Elsie's recently deceased husband Rupert. She arrives, a former match girl, to this crumbling mansion where stories and rumours about her new home mean that none of the locals will set foot in her home to even work for her. Upon exploration with her companion Sarah, they discover some wooden figures, scarily lifelike hidden away in the garret. Sarah decides that she will like them out in the house as company and they take them downstairs. It is this move that seals the fate of this novel.

The book moves back and forth in time, in the present day, 1866, Elsie is in an asylum for the criminally insane after a fire at The Bridge which has left her without a voice. We also go back in time to the 1600s to the lives of Rupert's ancestors which include the mysterious Hetta, born without a tongue. The silent companions travel throughout the story, and I don't want to spoil anything but they are wonderfully creepy throughout.

The best bit about the book for me though was the ending and I say that because I have a real 'thing' about endings that leave me feeling 'meh' or 'pfff' - don't get me started on Gone Girl again, but this book has a proper ending. One that made me inhale sharply as I read the final words on the last page. That is what I want to read in a book, not some flaky 'I'll just finish it like this' ending but a proper, thought out closure and The Silent Companions has this in spades.

Go read, be haunted!

This is how creepy gothic suspense is done! A spooky 4/5 stars.

A warning: if you’re of a nervous disposition, I wouldn’t advise reading this alone at night or you’ll be jumping at shadows! I admit I’m a scaredy-cat, but The Silent Companions is just the right amount of creepy/suspenseful without being downright terrifying. A good approximation for anyone who wants to know if they’ll be frightened witless would be to say it’s about as scary as an episode of Dr Who featuring the Weeping Angels. In fact, that’s a pretty good indicator of what you’re in for with this book.

I was most impressed with the house in which the majority of the plot is set which, as anyone who likes their gothic literature will know, is one of the most important elements to get right in this sort of story. The Bridge is a proper crumbling pile with its own personality and has a character as crucial to the development of the drama as any of the humans involved. Every creaking board, dark corner and foggy pathway adds to the pervasive atmosphere of dread creeping throughout the narrative.

The three-part time structure of the story is handled well, with the various time jumps often coming just in time to provide welcome relief from some of the more tense passages in the main, Victorian part of the narrative.

None of the characters are particularly “likeable”, but that really doesn’t matter. As with most gothic tales you have to care just enough to want to know what happens next, but not be too upset if no-one gets a happily ever after.

Overall: a proper gothic chiller. Perfect for anyone looking for (mild) Halloween scares!

WOW! I loved this book, really creepy and atmospheric set in Victorian England. Look forward to the author's next one.

This book is fantastically creepy and wonderfully unsettling. Set in the mid 1800’s The Silent Companions opens with Elsie Bainbridge meeting her new psychiatrist, Dr Shepherd at the mental hospital in which she is incarcerated for murder. She is mute, burned beyond recognition and has no recollection of the events that led to her disastrous situation. We are then taken back in time and introduced to a different, younger Elsie who is both pregnant and recently widowed and has retired to the country to live in her deceased husband’s family house, The Bridge. What follows is a tale which oozes suspense and terror with a gradual building of tension that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

Laura Purcell uses some of my favourite narrative techniques in The Silent Companions to great effect. Time jumps, unreliable narrators and multiple viewpoints all build a picture of a crumbling mansion surrounded by fog, a house which is gloom-filled and desolate with a mysterious locked garret at the top of the house. Once ensconced within the house Elsie is tormented by an odd hissing noise whilst the maids find words written in the dust in the abandoned nursery. When the garret is opened they find diaries belonging to an ancestor from the 1600s and strange wooden creatures painted to look human whose eyes seem to follow Elsie, and the other inhabitants of The Bridge around the room. These Silent Companions look unnervingly real; one looks like a young Elsie, another like a young gypsy boy whilst a third is an old woman. They multiply, and as danger and death reaches The Bridge new companions appear that shake Elsie to her core.

The diary belongs to Anne Bainbridge, an ancestor who along with her husband Josiah are preparing for a visit by the King and Queen. Anne dabbles in white magic and after both losing her sister and having difficulty conceiving she concocts a potion to enable pregnancy and gives birth to a girl who is mute. The visit by the King and Queen sets in motion a chain of events that has consequences for subsequent generations of the Bainbridge family. The diary of Anne was a great touch – I really connected with this and it was written with a different tone entirely which gave a different voice to the terror.

The Silent Companions is a wonderful gothic novel which is reminiscent of some of my favourite classics. It has tones of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre – particularly in its exploration of the presumed frailty and madness of women. I loved that the main characters and voices were women and that the book examined their power and position in society in the 1600s and 1800s. Elsie is a ballsy, gutsy character and as I came to know her I really sympathised that her only chance of being saved from the hangman’s noose is to gain assistance from a man when she has lived her life being the one in control.

This is a perfect book for Autumn, a word of caution though, make sure that you are not alone when you read it. I was creeped out on more than one occasion and the descriptions of the silent companions are so realistic and lifelike that I was frequently fighting off goosebumps. It is wonderfully written and multi layered with oodles of suspense and tension.

The Silent Companions is a book that quite honestly pulled the rug out from under my feet. How come? Well, it's a book that was alright, but honestly, I didn't think I would be so engrossed in the book that I had to finished reading it before I slept. So, I read until almost midnight because somewhere along the way came a moment when I just couldn't stop reading the book.

Now, it takes a lot to scare or even creep me out and honestly, this book didn't manage that. But, it was interesting and addictive to read. And, I just wanted to learn the truth about the wooden figures, the silent companions and what the old diaries from the 1700-century will tell. And, what really happened to Elsie's husband Rubert? Did he just die, and are the servants really sincere? What really happened in the house that is said to be cursed? I just love haunted houses, cursed houses, placed in a desolate landscape with an atmosphere of doom.

If you like a book with dual storylines, mysteries, and especially love to read about old houses that are said to be cursed than you will love this book. The Silent Companions is a book that took me by surprise and I loved how I slowly was bulled into the story and how I just needed to read one more chapter. Love books like that!

This is a very creepy, gothic tale. Set in Victorian England, the book opens with Elsie Bainbridge, mute and medicated in a hospital recovering from some unspeakable murders of which she is accused. Unable to speak after all that has happened to her she is encouraged by one of the doctors to write down her story.

The scene is set when Elsie, recently married and soon after widowed, is sent to her husband's crumbling estate to bury him and then wait out the birth of her baby. Apart from Sarah, a cousin of her husband, sent to keep her company, only a housekeeper and two maids live in the house. It is cold and decrepit and Elsie hears strange noises at night (getting creepy yet?). The local village and church are also very poor and run down with the villagers too fearful to work on the estate . Added to this setting are some strange full sized 'silent companions', trompe l'oeil figures painted on free standing wooden boards to resemble children and maids. Discovered in a locked attic and brought into the main house by Sarah and Elsie these have an uncanny way of watching people and don't seem to stay where they're put and aren't easily destroyed (definitely getting creepy?). Now add some old diaries written some 200 years before describing the horrific events that lead to the start of the Bainbridge family's downfall and link to the nightmares that cause Elsie changing from a confident young woman to the sad, broken shell we see at the start of the book, and the result is a very atmospheric, scary tale.

Thank you Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for a copy of the book for an honest review.
I don’t usually read ghost stories but, reading the blurb drew me in to this eerie gothic tale. Elsie Bainbridge arrives at the run down family mansion, after the death of her husband Rupert Bainbridge. She is awaiting the birth of her child. When, things start to go wrong when they find the ‘silent companion’ a painted woodened figure hidden away in a disused room. So they bring it into the made rooms of the house. And Elsie thinks that the figure is moving, following her through the house. Herself and others in the house don’t believe her and they think she is going insane. Then accidents start to happen in the house and people die. Elsie is accused of their murders and ends up in an asylum.
I enjoyed this creepy gothic book. I liked the authors style of writing, the characters. It reminded me a bit of the woman in black. And the ‘silent companions’ will be with me for a while.

This is a deeply unsettling, wonderfully atmospheric and truly creepy novel. We first meet Elsie Bainbridge as a patient in an asylum, where she is suspected of murder. The progressive Dr Shepherd encourages her to write down her story, as she is refusing, or unable, to speak. What emerges is her recounting how she married Rupert Bainbridge, largely to help save her brother’s match factory. However, although the marriage was one of convenience, Elsie found herself surprisingly happy to be the wife of her new husband. Sadly, though, she shortly finds herself both pregnant and widowed; sent by her brother to stay at her husband’s country house, The Bridge.

Forget any ideas of a country idyll though. The Bridge huddles miserably in the muddy countryside, neglected and forlorn; surrounded by a straggle of cottages, whose inhabitants seem to view the big house with suspicion. As locals refuse to work there, Elsie finds housekeeper Edna Holt and two maids, plus she is accompanied by Sarah, a poor relation of her husband, who is acting as her companion.

Unsettled and lonely, Elsie begins to hear noises at night. Exploring with Sarah, the pair uncover some strange wooden Dutch ‘companions,’ which are lifelike, cut out paintings. Initially Elsie thinks they are interesting and unusual, but soon the companions seem to have a life of their own… Along with the companions, Sarah uncovers a diary from Anne Bainbridge, her ancestor, written two hundred years before. Anne, and her husband, Josiah, are thrilled that Charles I and his wife, Henrietta Maria, are to visit their house. However, Josiah is keen that their mute daughter, Hetta, is kept away from the royal visitors. Tragedies also seem to follow the house throughout the years, leaving a sense of deep disquiet and unease among the locals.

This is a clever, intelligent novel, with a good storyline and characters. It is eerie, wonderfully well written and you are unsure whether events are down to the supernatural or whether something else is behind the strange events in the house. An excellent novel and a wonderfully creepy read. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

The perfect book for a cold Autumn night, The Silent Companions kept me up half the night with fright for all the right reasons.

We start by meeting psychiatric patient Elsie Bainbridge, hiding from a traumatic past with the threat of the hangman looming above her. She seems to harbour an irrational fear of wood, and has lost the ability to speak. With the help of a newly enthusiastic doctor, she starts her recovery by writing down her version of recent events. We are then thrown into Elsie's life a year previously, as she arrives newly widowed and newly pregnant at the ancestral home of her late husband with a spinster cousin, Sarah. The housekeeper and servants are inept, and the local villagers openly hostile - holding a grudge following a number of tragic accidents some years ago. On top of this, the house has a menacing atmosphere - with strange noises at night and the sudden appearances of sinister silent companions that seem to move from room to room.With the discovery of a diary from 200 years ago, Sarah and Elsie hope to answer the reasons behind the unnatural feel to the house - but what they discover may have been better left hidden.

There are three main timelines within the story - Elsie within the psychiatric facility, Elsie at the ancestral home a year previously, and the diary story line of 200 years prior. At times, I found the diary story line quite dull and wanted to skip it. A lot of the information provided within this timeline is rather obvious, and is repeated later on by Sarah anyway. I also didn't really warm to any of the characters. I think perhaps if more time had be spent dedicated to this story line, instead of in small chapters that interrupted the flow of the main narrative, I would have appreciated the information it offered more. The other two timelines worked well together, and the characters here were much more well developed.

Elsie is a wonderful main character - to see the change from newly widowed yet still hopeful woman, to deranged mad woman was a large task to take on - yet I feel Laura Purcell handled it well. You feel as desperate as Elsie does when no-one believes her story, and I found myself really rooting for her - even though I knew it was ultimately hopeless.. The subtle hints scattered throughout Elsie's backstory relating to her late mother, father and Jolyon were also craftily done. I like it when books sometimes don't spell everything out for the reader, and allow their own deductions to work out the mysteries.

Sarah I was less enamoured with. On multiple occasions I found Sarah's obsession with her family history grating, and her insipidness really annoyed me. I understood the reasoning behind this though, as I felt that this was how Elsie felt about Sarah at the beginning too - and indeed their relationship development was definitely a positive to the narrative, although I still thought Sarah relied too heavily on Elsie to 'solve' everything.

That said, the book itself has such a good atmospheric, creepy feel to it that I was immediately drawn into the world. There's an underlying sense of foreboding throughout - and although there's a slow build up of tension, the release at the end of the novel really packed a punch. The ending was pretty obvious,but I was still genuinely left feeling unsettled and frightened, and it will be a long time before I forget about the silent companions. Perfect for spooky nights.

The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell

It is 1865 and Elsie Bainbridge carries the cares of the world on her shoulders. Married just months before, her husband Robert has died and she has little choice but to head to his crumbling country estate, The Bridge, where she will give birth to their child. The villagers are hostile and the servants are suspicious and unfriendly. Fortunately, Elsie has her husband’s cousin Sarah for company. They will come to rely on each other very much in the lonely months ahead. But perhaps they are not as alone as they might think.

When Elsie sets about getting to know her new home, she and Sarah come across a locked garret. Inside they find a diary dating from the 1630s and a wooden figure that looks disturbingly familiar. It is, she learns, a Silent Companion. Soon Elsie’s nights are disturbed by strange sounds. The servants insist there’s a nest of rats hiding in the walls. Elsie isn’t so sure – it sounds like wood being worked, being moved.

Interspersed throughout this wonderfully creepy, superbly Gothic novel are extracts from the diary which take us back in time to 1635 when Anne Bainbridge was mistress of the house. At that time everyone was hugely excited because King Charles I and his Queen were intending to spend a night at The Bridge. Everything was going so well…

I love haunted house stories and The Silent Companions was a book I couldn’t wait to read. I’d been told that it was genuinely frightening and so I settled down to read it late one evening. In fact, I only read this book at night. This isn’t a book for commutes and lunchtime reads – it deserves to be read by lamplight, when every sound seems louder in the quiet night. It’s a hugely atmospheric read. The Bridge is a fine example of a rickety, old and unloved Gothic mansion. It creeks. Its wood feels alive. And in its midst are Elsie and Sarah. We fear for them.

The sections from the 1630s are every bit as engrossing as the Victorian chapters. And the characters are just as intriguing, if not more so. Told in Anne’s own words, during these sections we are immersed in the past and it’s a dangerous and fearful place indeed.

I had two very late nights with The Silent Companions. I didn’t want to put it down and I couldn’t wait to pick it up again. It certainly gave me the heebie jeebies and made my spine shiver. I love that feeling! It’s dark, tragic and, at times, deliciously scary, but it never goes overboard. The emphasis here is on Elsie and Anne and what this house, so claustrophobic and dark, does to them, two centuries apart. It’s quite a tale, full of Gothic wonders. I must also say that the hardback is gorgeous inside and out.

An interesting book by an author I have not come across before. It begins in an asylum where Elsie Bainbridge has been incarcerated for a period of time, she is unable to speak, due to past trauma. The book then continues with flashbacks into her past, gradually revealing why she is in the asylum.
A diary is found in the attic of her recently deceased husband's childhood home, and along with Elsie's story, we are taken back further in time via diary entries, when a previous owner of the house is hosting a royal visit, and his wife recounts events prior to, during, and immediately after the visit. This involves details about her daughter Hetta who is a mute child, having a deformed tongue, somewhat mirroring Elsie's affliction, but without a physical cause in her case. It is for this royal visit that the companions of the title are purchased and placed throughout the house,wooden, lifesize, lifelike figures, designed to impress the King and Queen.
The whole story is very Gothic in style, and has dark themes including murder, the cruel treatment of people with mental health problems, child abuse, and the general intolerance of society in the past to deal with people who are considered to be different from the mainstream.
The behaviour of the wooden companions also introduces a paranormal aspect.
I did enjoy the book but felt it could have been shorter, and I found the ending quite abrupt as if the author had run out of steam. That said I would still be interested in reading more of her work.
Thanks to Netgalley and Bloomsbury Publishing for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a spooky delight! I loved the narrative framing and the gothic journey of the novel. I keep hearing hissing everywhere!

This was WAY out of my comfort zone, I don't normally read creepy/horror-type books, but this scared me so much. I started out reading it mostly in the daytime (bright sunshine preferred) but then last night I could not sleep so I finished it. Not a good idea. I did not want to get up to go to the bathroom and I had to switch on ALL the lights and then the cat scared the beejeezus out of me. I thought it was really well written, really spooky and I am sure in a couple of weeks I will no longer be scared of my shadow.

A slow burning historical tale of ghosts and witchcraft.

A widow moves to her late husband's run down ancestral home. The door to a long locked attic suddenly opens up to reveal a terrible family story and a beautiful yet sinister painted wooden cut-out of a child, a 'companion'.

The menacing tone of this book builds very slowly. This is not a scare a minute book. It is extremely unsettling and creeps up on you gradually, but when the scares do come they really wallop you. I physically shivered and felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end and it is very rare that a book does that to me.

A very atmospheric, old fashioned Gothic chiller.

Are you sitting comfortably? It’s time for a Gothic horror story.
Hooray!
The Gothic is great: it’s an underestimated genre, and perhaps not one that gets enough attention, but its been making waves and sending shivers down people’s spines since before the Brontës first put pen to paper. A good Gothic story is chilling, has some supernatural elements in, and usually has a tortured protagonist.
The Silent Companions has all that, and more: it’s an excellent read, and one that had me hooked. It’s genuinely creepy, but it’s also interesting, exciting and pulls at the heartstrings- especially in its depiction of the central character, Elsie.
The story opens in a lunatic asylum, where the main character (as yet unnamed) has been languishing, mute, burned, and tormented, for the past year. She’s been called a murderess, but a doctor believes she can be cured- and that the answer for that cure is to write down her story. Thus unfolds the story of Elsie, factory-worker-turned-Victorian-lady, who moves to the country seat her recently-deceased husband left her. Stuck in the middle of the countryside, she soon discovers a hidden attic, and inside, a wooden painting of a ‘silent companion’: a Dutch-style cut-out painting of a life-size person. But there’s something a lot creepier to the companions that first meets the eye, and soon things at The Bridge start to spiral out of control…
I liked how much effort Purcell put into characterising Elsie. There are no plot twists so much as unfoldings, as new details about her past are given to us, that affect our view of her as the story goes along. Though initially appearing cold and unfeeling, Elsie’s gradual descent into fear and confusion mirrors our deepening understanding of her, and why she is the way she is- as well as invoking curiosity about why she ended up in the asylum. As a result, she becomes a genuinely tragic character, whom I ended up liking and rooting for as the story progressed.
And man, did it progress. From the atmospheric curling mist at the start of the story, to the Jacobean ruin that is The Bridge, to the silent companions that gradually become more and more malevolent over the course of the story, the story is a masterclass in suspense. Purcell writes with a sure hand that skillfully builds tension, intercutting Elsie’s story with that of Jane Bainbridge, a previous Stuart owner of the house whose daughter, Hetta, might just be the cause of the horror that’s happening two hundred years later. By the time we know the cause of the companions, it’s too late for Elsie. I especially appreciated the fact that the book was set in two different eras- the Victorian lending the story a truly Brontëan Gothic flavour- and Purcell’s experience in writing historical fiction comes to serve her well here; the story is completely absorbing.
Tying together a story with three interconnected plot strands is no easy task, but here it’s done really well. Though I’d have appreciated perhaps a little less build-up to the reveal of the Silent Companions, and some more work into fleshing out the servants that Elsie works with, the story is tense, gloriously dark and twisted, and works extremely well.
Though I’d have appreciated perhaps a little less build-up to the reveal of the silent companions themselves, and some more work into fleshing out the servants that Elsie works with, the story is tense, gloriously dark and twisted, and by the end is genuinely unsettling. It’s a must read for anybody who loves their historical fiction with a little bite!

Well, I read this one in twenty-four hours flat! I picked it up, meaning to read a few pages and return to it later, but was completely and utterly hooked. I ended up reading the last half in the evening without realising it had got dark outside until I hit the last page. And reading this book while sitting in the dark is not really a good idea!

The Silent Companions is a deliciously gothic mystery/horror with a dual timeline - Victorian England and the reign of Charles I. The story starts with a new doctor meeting one of the patients at St Joseph's Hospital for the Insane. The patient is mute so she writes down the events that led to her incarceration a year ago. We then switch to Elsie Bainbridge, newly married, newly widowed, arriving at her husband's crumbling ancestral home to wait for her baby to be born. She's also running from scandal - her husband was wealthy and the whispers about whether or not his death was natural have already started. Although escorted by her younger brother, he soon leaves her in the company of a few resentful servants and her husband's widowed cousin, Sarah. When Elsie and Sarah explore the house they find two wooden props, skillfully painted to look like children, hidden away in a locked garret: a girl and a gypsy boy - and the girl looks just like Elsie...

As you will have already worked out, I found The Silent Companions absolutely gripping. It's very well-written and very fast-paced - unusual for this kind of novel. Something happens on practically every page and the clever thing is that until almost the very end you are never quite sure whether Elsie is imagining everything that happens, or if she's being 'Gaslighted', or if there really was something evil locked up in that garret.

One of my favourite reads this year. Recommended, particularly if you love authors such as Shirley Jackson and Daphne du Maurier, stories like The Turn of the Screw and The Woman in Black - and terrifying yourself half to death on a dark autumn evening!

Elsie Bainbridge is being held in a mental asylum, accused of arson and murder. Trauma and smoke damage have rendered her mute, so there's no way she can plead her innocence to her jailers, even if she wanted to revisit the horrific incidents that led to her imprisonment. Then along comes a new, sympathetic doctor whose non-threatening ways and willingness to communicate start to open up Elsie's memories, and so she begins her tale - of an old mansion deep in the country, strange noises at night, mysterious deaths, lifelike wooden figures which seem to move on their own, and a centuries old diary that might hold clues to the horrors which stalk the house ...

This is without doubt one of the creepiest stories I've read - full of tension and steadily increasing horror, it's one to give you goosebumps up the arms, and shivers down the spine. At the heart of it lies the old Bainbridge family home, The Bridge, its rather strange collection of 'silent companions' and events which happened centuries ago.
The house has been crumbling quietly, looked after by the minimum of staff, but the return of newly-married Rupert Bainbridge seems to waken something malevolent there. After his sudden death, his widow Elsie arrives at the house, accompanied by her late husband's penniless cousin Sarah, in a swirl of mist. The nearby small village is tumbledown; the locals hostile and wary, peering from their windows to watch the 'gentry' go past; the house itself neglected and overgrown with ivy. What could be a better setting for a gothic horror tale?

And things progress with a growing sense of unease. There are tales of skeletons discovered in the grounds, noises are heard at night from the permanently locked attic, the painted 'silent companions', once intended as a talking point for guests, take on a far more sinister aspect, and as Elsie's back story gradually emerges that seems to have been equally full of horrors though of a more human, less supernatural, kind.

For me, it definitely wasn't the sort of book to read at night when everyone else had gone to bed. Within the story there's a feeling of things happening just out of sight, of someone or something creeping up behind Elsie's back, and this began to creep over me while reading. I loved it, but at times I found the mounting tension too much and just wanted to walk away from it, go outside, see the sunshine, or talk to someone, just to get away from the slow relentless build up of horror! A thoroughly excellent read, if you're happy to be spooked!

I started reading The Silent Companions and fell headfirst into it. This is the kind of book you make time to read, the kind you tuck yourself away with to finish.

In 1865, Elsie finds herself widowed shortly after her marriage to Rupert Bainbridge. Accompanied by Rupert's spinster cousin Sarah, she journeys to the Bainbridges' country seat and finds it in a state of disrepair. The few staff are inexperienced, as the people of Fayford refuse to work at the house: some say a villager was murdered there, while others believe a Bainbridge ancestor was a witch. Things take a turn for the spooky when Elsie ventures into the garret and is confronted with a painted wooden figure which has a striking resemblance to her younger self. It's not long before more of these figures – known as 'silent companions' – begin to appear in the house. Meanwhile, Sarah finds a diary belonging to her 17th-century ancestor Anne, whose story may shed some light on the secret of the companions.

At first, I wasn't sure how I would get on with this book (especially as I don't read much historical fiction anymore), but from the scene of Elsie's arrival in Fayford, I was hooked. Purcell creates a delightfully eerie atmosphere, laden with mist and mystery, overflowing with creepy details and things that go bump in the night. If you relish the conventions of gothic horror in their purest, most traditional form, you will find much to enjoy here. It reminded me of John Boyne's This House is Haunted, John Harwood's The Asylum, and The Miniaturist if it was a ghost story.

The last few chapters do get a bit silly and over-the-top, and I think the ending would have had more impact if it'd been a little more ambiguous. Also (though this isn't necessarily a criticism) I found the companions intriguing rather than frightening (especially their origins, and the whole thing with the shop – I'd have loved to read more about that!) As a whole, the book is far more atmospheric than scary.

I devoured The Silent Companions, and I really hope the author writes more books in this vein in future – I love discovering new writers who do ghost stories/horror/gothic as effectively as this.

This is a tantalisingly creepy and menacing gothic horror novel, populated by ghosts, and set in 1866. It begins with a patient, Mrs Elsie Bainbridge, a woman badly burnt in a fire, being questioned by Dr Shepherd, a progressive psychologist at St Joseph's, after a year in which she has been recovering from her injuries. She is mute and cannot remember what happened. It becomes apparent there have been several deaths and she is suspected of murder. With a hangman's noose hovering over her, Dr Shepherd slowly gets her to remember what happened which she writes on a slate. It begins with a pregnant Elsie travelling to a dilapidated country house, The Bridge, where her husband, Rupert, recently died. She has never been there before, and is accompanied by a spinster companion, Sarah, a poverty stricken relative of her husband. The house leaves a lot to be desired, with two inexperienced maids and Mrs Holt, the housekeeper. Locals believe the house is cursed, once inhabited by a witch, with a history numerous strange deaths and accidents.

Elsie hears strange sounds and hissing which unnerves her. The house is littered with 'companions' constructed of wood and painting intended to startle, Dutch in origin. One looks uncannily like Elsie, they appear to move, with new ones appearing out of thin air, sinister and exuding menace. Sarah is obsessed by finding out about her family history. With strange events revolving round the old nursery and the garret, and apparently hallucinatory experiences, Elsie hears about writings that come and go. The diary of Anne Bainbridge from over 2oo years ago is discovered. This gives us a historical storyline about the marriage of Anne and Josiah Bainbridge, and their preparation for a visit by the King. Anne lost her beloved sister and conjures a pregnancy from potions and ancient words for a girl. This results in Hetta, their mute daughter, a young girl destined to haunt The Bridge. A litany of horrors and tragedies unfold, destined to echo and replicate down the centuries. The reader is left wondering whether Elsie is treading the territory of madness or whether there is a deeper malevolent evil at play.

Laura Purcell has written a deeply unsettling story inhabiting by ghosts, and the fearsome, scary, silent companions which are unlikely to be forgotten anytime soon by me. It is the ideal book to read around Halloween, or whenever you feel like a need to be frightened out of your wits. It is a story of family secrets and the traumatic history of a house that is no stranger to death and tragedy. Purcell's writing is atmospheric, with a subtle and complex narrative that leaves the reader wondering what to believe. The character of Elsie, a woman hampered by the rigidity of Victorian expectations of woman, is a brilliant creation. Her development charting her path to a broken woman is mesmerising. A brilliantly spooky and creepy read. Thanks to Bloomsbury for an ARC.

Brilliantly eerie. Its great to Read a ghost story of this caliber.there's not enough of them about.