The Children's Home
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Gallic Books
Published:1st Feb '16
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
Described as 'beautifully written and crafted' by Daily Mail, The Children's Home is a beguiling, disarming novel about a mysterious group of children who unexpectedly visit a disfigured recluse in his country home.
'A beautiful and uncanny novel' Jenny Offill, author of Weather
In a sprawling estate, willfully secluded, lives Morgan Fletcher, the disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins. Morgan spends his days in quiet study, avoiding his reflection in mirrors and the lake at the end of his garden. One day, two children, Moira and David, appear. Morgan takes them in, giving them free reign of the mansion he shares with his housekeeper Engel. Then more children begin to show up.
Dr. Crane, the town physician and Morgan's lone tether to the outside world, is as taken with the children as Morgan, and begins to spend more time in Morgan's library. But the children behave strangely. They show a prescient understanding of Morgan's past, and their bizarre discoveries in the mansion attics grow increasingly disturbing. Every day the children seem to disappear into the hidden rooms of the estate, and perhaps, into the hidden corners of Morgan's mind.
The Children's Home is a genre-defying, utterly bewitching masterwork, an inversion of modern fairy tales like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, in which children visit faraway lands to accomplish elusive tasks. Lambert writes from the perspective of the visited, weaving elements of psychological suspense, Jamesian stream of consciousness, and neo-gothic horror, to reveal the inescapable effects of abandonment, isolation, and the grotesque - as well as the glimmers of goodness - buried deep within the soul.
'This disquieting novel is surely one of the year’s most bizarre stories … Mr. Lambert’s subtle prose enhances the novel’s creepiness, as does his refusal to fully resolve or explain its many mysteries' New York Times
'Beautifully written and crafted, and more compelling than many thrillers' Daily Mail
'A beautiful and uncanny novel by a writer who never ceases to surprise' Jenny Offill, author of Weather
'The Children’s Home is a not-nice sort of fairy tale, where the magic doesn’t sparkle prettily but boils and oozes, where the Prince has a face of tatters, where the children take grown-up revenge on their monsters. It is also, somehow, a searching, empathetic narrative about forgiveness Owen King, author of Double Feature: A Novel
'Charles Lambert could one day attain classic status' Maggie Gee
'Charles Lambert is a seriously good writer' Beryl Bainbridge
'A thoroughly original entry into the tradition of ghost stories, eschewing convention. … Compulsively readable, a one-of-a-kind literary horror story Kirkus
'This genre-bending debut is by turns dread-inducing and heartwarming, a masterful exploration of whether innocence can truly sprout from ignorance … a magical, mesmerizing tale about the courage it takes to confront the unknown' Booklist, starred review
'One book that I shall re-read and re-read again' Postcard Reviews
'Charles Lambert’s novel is entirely original … highly compelling and invigorating writing' Lonesome Reader
'Charles Lambert has crafted an exquisitely strange and deliciously dark offering … the narrative itself will haunt his readers well beyond the margins of its pages' High Voltage Magazine
'A haunting Gothic in the vein of Shirley Jackson, steeped with the mystery and imagination of Neil Gaiman’s fairy tales. Lambert’s prose is beautiful and his tale is mesmerizing' Cemetery Dance Online
'The best kind of ghost story – one that scares, one that surprises … and one that you simply can’t stop reading’ The Maine Edge
'May well be the most surprising, thought provoking and also baffling book I’ve ever read' Bailieborough Library Reading Group
'Lambert is a brilliant writer, and his absorbing new novel, The Children’s Home, is the best literary fiction I have read in some time' Seattle Book Mama
'A powerful construction of creeping dread which skilfully keeps the reader off-balance at every turn' The Star
ISBN: 9781910709009
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
206 pages
International