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A Novel
by Kate Collins
The dazzling debut novel from Kate Collins—a feminist gothic mystery spanning decades, in the vein of Mexican Gothic and The Essex Serpent.
Once upon a time Orla was: a woman, a painter, a lover. Now she is a mother and a wife, and when her husband Nick suggests that their city apartment has grown too small for their lives, she agrees, in part because she does agree, and in part because she is too tired to think about what she really does want. She agrees again when Nick announces with pride that he has found an antiquated Georgian house on the Dorset cliffs—a good house for children, he says, tons of space and gorgeous grounds. But as the family settles into the mansion—Nick absent all week, commuting to the city for work—Orla finds herself unsettled. She hears voices when no one is around; doors open and close on their own; and her son Sam, who has not spoken in six months, seems to have made an imaginary friend whose motives Orla does not trust.
Four decades earlier, Lydia moves into the same house as a live-in nanny to a grieving family. Lydia, too, becomes aware of intangible presences in the large house, and she, like Orla four decades later, becomes increasingly fearful for the safety of the children in her care. But no one in either woman's life believes her: the stories seem fanciful, the stuff of magic and mayhem, sprung from the imaginations of hysterical women who spend too much time in the company of children.
Are both families careening towards tragedy? Are Orla and Lydia seeing things that aren't there? What secrets is the house hiding? A feminist gothic tale perfectly suited for the current moment, A Good House for Children combines an atmospheric mystery with resonant themes of motherhood, madness, and the value of a woman's work.
"Collins skillfully intercuts the two storylines, making clever use of structure to maximize tension, resonance, and fright, while the familiar setup fools readers into thinking they know what path the plot will follow. A moody, evocative, close-third narrative underscores the keenly rendered characters' mounting distress and claustrophobia. A harrowing slow burn with feminist undertones." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"[Collins] skillfully laces her narrative with clues that suggest the events unfolding are not as straightforward—or linear—as they seem. This one is sure to connect with fans of the weird and macabre." —Publishers Weekly
"The dream house in the country is a fictional standard for illuminating the realities of women's domestic life; when the dream turns to nightmare, it's the perfect setting for horror... Atmospheric and beautifully written, A Good House for Children builds slowly but surely into a terrifying ghost story." —Guardian (UK)
"A stunning debut... A terrifying and propulsive gothic story with so much to say about parenthood, privilege and the psychological burden of motherhood. I was utterly mesmerised by it and found it so unsettling that I had to keep the lights on! ... Incredibly accomplished and original." —Katherine Faulkner, author of Greenwich Park
"Collins intertwines the tales of Orla and Lydia, who have each lived in the Reeve: a house subject to haunting, but also a place where boundaries blur ... between different times, but also of the sense of reality and the other, and ultimately, the edge of sanity itself. A beautifully written, creepy tale reminiscent of Shirley Jackson." — Alison Littlewood, author of A Cold Season
This information about A Good House for Children was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Kate Collins is a writer of long-form and short fiction. From West Cork, Ireland, she now lives and works in Oxfordshire. A Good House for Children is her debut novel.
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