James Stoddard: The False House (1998)

Edition: Earthlight, 1999 (Buy from Amazon)
Review number: 814

In many ways The False House is a worthy sequel to Stoddard's excellent debut The High House. It does fail in some ways, leaving the earlier novel as the more effective.

Even though their leader, the Bobby, has been destroyed, the Society of Anarchists has just gone into hiding. They still intend to take over the House of Evenmere to re-mould it as they desire. Carter Anderson, now come into his inheritance as Master of the House, maintains his vigilance but not for some years does he connect the disappearance of his wife's foster sister with an Anarchist resurgence. This is manifested in gradual transformations of the structure and inhabitants of Evenmere, and Carter eventually learns that only by the release of Lizbeth can these changes be reversed.

The major fault which mars The False House seems to be indecision as to who the central character should be. In the end, Stoddard has clearly opted for Carter, who is probably easier to base the story around as this makes it possible to portray something of the special relationship he has with the house. However, there are several points where it looks as though the original intention was to use Carter's younger brother Duskin, who as a seventeen year old had dazzled Lizbeth, then aged twelve, before her kidnapping, and who had been the central figure in her thoughts helping her through her years of captivity. His transformation from heedless young man, interested only in monster hunting, to responsible adult would also form a good basis for character development at the centre of the story, while Carter is left virtually unchanged by the adventures. So, we are given a few chapters at the beginning in which it looks as though Duskin is being set up as central character (the account of his first meeting with Lizbeth), and a few chapters at the end in which his intervention is important; while in between he is hardly even mentioned.

The background of the house that mirrors the universe is as atmospheric as in the first novel, with rather more specifically Christian imagery this time. An interesting detail is that the anarchists allow Lizbeth just one book to read in the years of her captivity; they give her Wuthering Heights to teach her despair. It certainly helps to have read that novel to understand parts of this one - almost everything Lizbeth says is a quotation; if I had read it more recently, I might have recognised the context of more of the quotations and I would have got more out of this story.

The False House is good, but could be better; other than the poor treatment of Duskin it is an interesting novel.

James Stoddard: High House (1998)

Edition: Simon & Schuster, 1998
Review number: 428

Were it not for the prior existence of Peake's Gormenghast trilogy and Crowley's Little, Big, High House would certainly seem far more original than it actually does. Like these novels, its focal point is a huge house which has a strange magical atmosphere. (The Gormenghast novels are far more dark than either of these others.) Like Gormenghast, the High House is full of strange people and places; in High House, these are often allusive.

The High House comes under attack from the Anarchists, who seek to harness its power. When the young child Carter, son of the Master of the House, is tricked into losing the keys - by which the doors which should remain locked are kept locked, and vice versa - he is sent away, to grow up in the normal world in which we live. This is as much for his own protection as for any other reason, but when his father disappears some years later he has to return to search without much knowledge of the house and its customs.

As as the House itself being huge, it groups together a large number of countries which are mostly allied with the Master against forces seeking to disturb the House and through it the entire universe, with which it is mysteriously connected. As well as the dinosaur in the attic and the Room of Horrors which terrifies Carter as a child, these countries are inventive little pieces of fantasy. There are subtle allusions to famous classics of the genre, such as the Narnia series.

To say that High House is like the Gormenghast trilogy is to praise it rather than to put it down; I suspect that, like Peake's work, its riches will be revealed again each time it is re-read.