The house of Ashes by Stuart Neville
⭐⭐⭐⭐/5


Ok so this book is good! Its so good !
I loved it . Parts of it were so difficult to understand, do to the language barrier.. no, more like a Irish slang barrier . But after a while I got it !
I almost put this book down around 20% but Im so glad I kept going .
This is a story of severe abuse that remained unsolved for 60 years until a young woman and her abusive husband move into the old mysterious house . . The story from the start arrested me ! I needed to know what happened .
I had all the feelings for everyone of these poor characters, the main character building was superbly written.
I didn't think Id love this one like I did . So happy I kept reading .
Filled with tragedy , this book will keep your pages turning until you read the very last page

If you’re a fan of Tana French’s The Witch Elm or Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, you will love Stuart Neville’s The House of Ashes. The protagonist, Sara Keane, and her husband have just moved to Northern Ireland from England. Sara is isolated in a new country with no friends, no job and no car. She soon discovers that the house she’s secluded in has a secret history when an old woman shows up at her door claiming to be the owner. Sara decides to investigate and discovers the horrible history buried beneath her home.

The author successfully alternates between Sara, the current homeowner and Mary, the previous owner. As the plot progresses, the reader begins to learn the history and horrors of the events that occurred. The gradual unveiling of the details creates a drama and building suspense. Readers will have a hard time putting this book down.

Thank you to NetGalley, Stuart Neville and Soho Press for the advanced readers copy.

I have long been a fan of Mr. Neville's superb novels set in Northern Ireland. The House of Ashes is a stand-alone book that is every bit as gripping as its predecessors. Briefly, a husband moves his wife, Sara, and children from England to a house in NI, ostensibly to give his wife a change after her emotional breakdown. This home is anything but peaceful and Damien is anything but a loving husband. Sara begins to understand that the house has a terrible history and she commits to solving a sixty-year-old mystery. The House of Ashes felt to me much like books by Tara French, which is a high compliment.

A more violent version of The Room. For some reason I kept
Reading/skimming til the end and kept asking myself why did I continue as the violence was overwhelming. Not for the faint of heart This type of story has been done better previously by other authors.

Stuart Neville, House of Ashes

The House of Ashes is a stunning novel, brutal, disturbing and completely riveting. It’s a crime novel but also a deeply affecting ghost story, the ghosts of children appearing to those who can see them, shadowy witnesses to the violence suffered:

“A deeper darkness took her for some time, her slumber haunted by broken dreams of broken children between walls and beneath floors…She saw a small boy, ragged clothes and bare feet, standing in the doorway to the kitchen. But she didn’t see him. Not really. He was no more than a folding of shadows, an impression of a boy, a confluence of light and darkness.”

Neville alternates between two intertwined narratives. In our own time, there is the story of a young Englishwomen, Sara Keane, brought to live in a remote farmhouse in the North of Ireland, kept virtually a prisoner there by her domineering husband. The second narrative is that of Mary, an old woman who brings with her the life of the farmhouse half a century ago – hammering on the door one morning, demanding to know why Sara is living there: “’Who are you?’ the woman asked. ‘Why are you in my house?...Where are the children? They need me. Where are they?’”

In both narratives, ‘the House of Ashes’ is dominated by the corrupt, implacable cruelty of men used to holding sway. The fearful, often hopeless struggle of the women they brutalise is heartrendingly portrayed. Life-endangering female resistance to misogyny is a recurrent theme in contemporary crime fiction, but The House of Ashes is one of the most vivid, moving and memorable treatments it has received.

From the moment Sara comes to live in the Ashes she senses the echoes of its long-ago inhabitants – sometimes sinister and frightening, like the bloodstain on the floor that keeps reappearing no matter how often she scrubs it out. Defying her husband’s wishes, she seeks Mary out, hoping to learn more about the events that seem to haunt the house. As Mary comes to trust Sara, she gives her glimpses of the life she had there as a girl, the harsh reality of past events that mysteriously seem to intersect with the troubled, often violent nature of Sara’s relationship with her husband. Mary reflects,

“When I think about it now, I wonder, was that place always bad. Was the wickedness in the soil? Maybe it had always been there, even before the house. Maybe the wickedness seeped up through the soil, like the water did through the floorboards, and maybe it spread its wickedness to them men.”

In Neville’s excellent debut novel, The Twelve (2009; published in the US as The Ghosts of Belfast), the protagonist, a former contract killer, is followed by the silent ghosts of those he has killed, urging him towards reprisal on their behalf. The child ghosts of The House of Ashes are a less vengeful, more purely innocent reminder of the terrible cost of a violent inheritance – of patterns of cruelty that come to seem the natural way of things. The unflinching brutality of Neville’s world is part of a moving and compassionate vision of the kind of courage it takes to resist “the wickedness that seeps up through the soil”.

Stuart Neville gives us an interesting horror story. The normal horror accoutrements are, of course, present: Ghosts, evil humans, a damsel in distress and a plot deep rooted in Northern Ireland and a remote location. Sara Keane is married and living in England when out of the blue her husband announces that he and his wife will be relocating to Northern Ireland in order to give Sara a chance to recuperate from a nervous breakdown she has undergone. Knowing no one in that area Sara goes in obedience to her husband and finds herself in a situation she never would have agreed to if she knew the facts of her new existence.
Living in the house prior to Sara's arrival are two women and three men. The men are holding the women as slaves ; making them work at maintaining the house - cooking, cleaning and providing sexual release when told to do so. Sara has no choice in the matter - she is dragged into the routine of the house with no choice open to her. One day an old woman wanders over to the house and knocks at the door. She left a home for mentally ill patients and tells those answering her knock that she is actually the owner of the house. At the same time; Mary, one of the women living in the house begins to tell her story of what is really going on. Sara , who has never completely accepted her captivity, uses the old woman's visit and Mary's tale to reopen thoughts of running away from her plight and begin to enjoy life once again.
The story and the telling of it are very engrossing keeping the reader glued to the pages. One big exception mars the format. And that is when the ending becomes an abrupt not very satisfying means of coming to a close. The reader is left with no sense of moving along with no discernable ending and no way of deciding if there is to be a continuation or just a drop off in midstream. I felt that the best course for the author would have been to continue the novel reaching a point where future action or ending would become evident.

I did not expect to like this book. I usually don't go for any woo woo factor in books. But, once I started reading it, I just kept going and going.

Sara and Damien move to Northern Ireland to start over. Sara has had some psychological issues and Damien thinks this will be good for her. One day an old women,Mary, who is hysterical shows up on her door step to ask about the children. Ignoring Damien's disapproval, Sara decides to research the house they are living in, the fire that burned it down and the children that Mary mentions. This leads to a friendship with the electrician who is working in their house and he decides to help her with the house mystery and the rapidly disenigrating relationship with Damien.

At one point the book takes a surprising turn into violence but the relationship with Damien is the classic story of emotional abuse. A good read.

A woman who has moved to an old house in Northern Ireland with her husband after a breakdown; a confused elderly woman who turns up at the door, looking for the "children" and convinced strangers have moved into her house. The story starts as if it will be a work of gothic suspense, but adds in a bit of a ghost story, and in time becomes a gritty, even brutal tale of women oppressed by men. In the present time, Sara is becoming aware that her husband and his thuggish father are controlling her life, gaslighting her into thinking she's incapable and fragile, keeping her from developing relationships or showing any signs of independence. In the past, we learn of the ghastly childhood of the woman who has turned up at her door, held captive in a basement by a family of brutish men who force the women they've captured to clean and cook and provide them with sexual release. The house itself is a character, refusing the let go of the past, filled with the whispers of dead children.

I'm highly allergic to women-in-captivity stories, but I admit to finding this novel quite riveting. Neville handles the dual storyline well and is able to blend the gothic women-in-jeopardy elements with a far grittier story. The ending is quite graphically violent, and some who signed up for gothic suspense might find it a bit much, but overall quite a compelling story about abusive men and women who manage to fight back despite the odds.

Following her husband’s lead, Sara has left their home in England for a “new” start in Northern Ireland after her nervous breakdown. The new location is hardly conducive to emotional wellbeing as Sara has no friends or job to occupy her time…and her mind. Then a woman comes pouding at the door, insisting that the house Sara and her husband are living in, is in fact hers. The woman is quickly returned to the nursing home she escaped from, but Sara is intrigued and sets out to uncover the truth about both the woman and her new home. This is the story of two women, both cowed and marginalized by men, who together, finally find the strength to stand up to their abusers and their pasts. Neville is a master, never one to follow a formula, all his books are so different and so incredibly beautiful