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The House of Footsteps

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The House of Footsteps

By: Mathew West
Narrated by: Joshua Manning
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About this listen

If you loved The Haunting of Hill House, welcome to Thistlecrook…

It’s 1923 and at Thistlecrook House, a forbidding home on the Scottish border, the roaring twenties seem not to have arrived. But Simon Christie has – a young man who can’t believe his luck when he gets a job cataloguing the infamous art collection of the Mordrake family. Yet from the moment he gets off the train at the deserted village station he can’t shift a headache and a sense that there’s more to the House and its gruesome selection of pictures.

Simon’s host is glad of his company, but he gets the feeling the house is not so welcoming. As his questions about the Mordrakes grow, he finds answers in surprising places. But someone is not pleased that old secrets are stirring.

As night falls each evening, and a growing sense of unease roils in the shifting shadows around him, Simon must decide what he can trust and ask if he can believe what he sees in the dusk or if his mind is poisoned by what has happened before in this place between lands, between light and dark.

©2022 Mathew West (P)2022 HarperCollins Publishers Limited Ghosts Gothic Historical Fiction Horror Supernatural Thriller & Suspense Scary Paranormal Haunted
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Strange story, well written and delivered however I feel as confused as the main character finished the book and still non the wiser.

Good story not spooky

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An art historian is sent to catalogue the paintings of the Moredrake family but finds himself drawn into a web of dark secrets stretching back centuries. The novel is so eloquently written and finely observed, it is reminiscent of the Victorian gothic style, and Joshua Manning's mellow Scottish accent exercises a hypnotic effect on the listener. Pure pleasure.

A ghost story and a love story

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If you are expecting a fast paced story, then this book is not for you. If you're looking forward to a slow atmospheric burn then you are in for a treat. This was a perfect book for me. I could visualise Thistlecrook house so well. The slow creeping dread and the thin veil between life and death lifting occasionally at first and then more permanently is brilliantly presented in all its bleak Gothic charm.

Fabulous! Reminiscent of MR James stories

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This appears to be the debut novel of Mathew West, whose parents must have wangled a publishing agreement for him as I can't image how else this drivel got printed. The premise is great, and the story is engaging up until the half way point when it completely loses its way before dragging itself to a half baked conclusion. All of the haunted house stereotypes are engaged, which were they employed ironically could be quite amusing. The story is so kitsch it veers into parody.
I know nothing about Mathew West, but I'm guessing he is the son of an upper middle class family from Northern England, who studied art history at Edinburgh University then interned at an auction house, probably Christies. I make these assumptions as the protagonist is transparently based on the author, and the story contains some unfortunate projections of his sexual anxieties and rather dated unimaginative and unoriginal attitude to women. Perhaps in future Mr. West could save his hubris for his private diary and not inflict it on the book purchasing public.

Truly awful, don't bother

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