Stuart Neville's chilling The House of Ashes mixes a gripping mystery with a soupçon of the supernatural. The 120-year-old house outside Belfast is called The Ashes ostensibly because the remote farm is behind a cluster of ash trees. But the name's darker meaning emerges as the house's history of violent occurrences unfolds, involving two women whose lives, separated by more than 60 years, were ruled by men and who were thrust into circumstances over which they had little control.
Former social worker Sara Keane's angry, domineering husband, Damien, decided they would move into the house, bought by her unyielding father-in-law, Francie, after situations "went bad" in England. The house's creepy basement, its isolation and Damien's emotional abuse intensify Sara's depression, as do the kitchen floor's persistent red stains, which reappear despite vigorous scrubbing. Sara's bewildered when elderly Mary Jackson shows up, yelling about missing children, a fire and insisting that she owns the house. As a child, Mary was locked in that basement for years with two women called "the Mummies," infrequently allowed out by the three brutal men who lived upstairs called "the Daddies." Only Mary survived a mass murder at the house.
Neville's eighth thriller delves deeply into the psyches of these two powerless women, alternating between Mary's past and Sara's present. Neville subtly weaves in Irish politics as The Troubles loom over Mary's time, while also affecting Sara's contemporary story. Damien never says Northern Ireland: "As if to speak its name would shame him."
Neville (Ratlines) fuses a heartbreaking story of domestic abuse with a tightly written thriller in The House of Ashes. --Oline H. Cogdill, freelance reviewer