The Vanishment by Jonathan AycliffeMy rating: 6 of 10 stars
Well well well...
What can be said about this book?
With less than 230 pages I hope something fast paced, and having read other books by the author like "The Matrix" or "the Lost" I hope something reminiscent but unfortunately it wasn't. I don't think the book is/was bad but I think it was not as good.
This novel is more akin to some old gothic novel in terms of pace and story. There isn't much fright evolved (probably the last 20 pages have some supernatural phenomenons).
Basically a couple go to a house for some vacation and the woman dislike the house and warns the husband of it. After a couple of days, the woman disappears and there is a investigation. Nothing comes up. Afterwards the man goes back to London where he stay at a friends house. Their daughter (The friends's) start saying stuff he read on reports on the house they stay almost a century before. Months afterwards his wife turns out dead. He then learns that the previous owner wife also vanish in that same house.
Soon afterwards their friends have an accident and they are both killed. The man then takes the child to that house to try to get rid of the curse.
In the end we get some strange connections, a bit far-fetched some, but all works out... There is a final "fright" and we learn a bit more about the main character past.
I hope for a different ending but as I said I think the author try to make some ode to old Gothic tales... why do I say this? Well, only in the last 30 pages or so, we learn that the man had a child and due to his drinking problem he got violent and killed his child. Still his wife kept with him (he was arrest 5 years). I thought that the author, since he only in the end, release that information, was trying to say that everything was in his mind and the drinking problem... i say this because there are several instances he was drinking AND because when he was at the house he thought he wrote several short stories and sent to his editor. Later on the Editor says that indeed he received his work BUT it was only one short story that basically told the house horror tale.... BUT it seems the writer was not going that way...
Nevertheless, good story - I read it in 3 days that means something, no?
Unfortunately it felt old, out of pace and the ending disappointed me with the confrontation of the supernatural being. The good parts; well the rural feeling, the story of the house, the child and the dread from the last 20/30 pages.
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