The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years

Finished March 18

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan

This novel takes place in a ruined mansion on the coast in Durban, South Africa. The main character is a teenage girl, Sana Malek. In 2014, she and her father Bilal move from an inland farm to live in a small apartment in this large house, Akbar Manzil. Akbar Manzil was built over a hundred years earlier, and was abandoned a few years later. The house was used for apartments once before, but abandoned again. Now a strange set of misfits live there. The owner is an old man they call Doctor. He has lived other places, but eventually found himself back in the town he was born in. His secrets are kept close until events and Sana's actions bring him to reveal them. A older thin woman named Razia Bibi seems at odds with her upstairs neighbour and complains a lot. Her neighbour, Fancy, a small woman has a bird named Mr. Patel that she sometimes brings into the hall so he can get more sunshine from the window there. Pinky was hired to clean the house, but eventually became overwhelmed at the task and stopped. She lives in a small room off the main kitchen, where she watches Bollywood movies. Zuleikha is more reclusive, leaving her former fame behind as she ages. As Sana learns about them she records their stories in her notebook, particularly when they talk of love. 

Sana is a quiet girl. Her mother died four years ago, and her twin sister died when they were babies. But her sister has haunted and tormented her for years, Sana is obsessed with the idea of love after seeing a couple kiss at a wedding, and she has searched since to discover how love affects the shape of things. She is curious about her new home and explores the house, venturing into distant hallways, and finding a floor in one wing where the hallway is filled with discarded items, from furniture to boxes of odds and ends. As she looks through these things, venturing further in, she finds a locked door, and begins to wonder what is beyond it. She also explores the garden behind the house, which is filled with cages, many of them broken and odd assortments of bones. . The garden has mostly gone wild, but Fancy gardens in the evenings, and Sana begins to spend time bringing it back to order as well. When Sana finds the room behind the locked door, she becomes obsessed with the woman who lived there, Meena, and reads her words, wanting to know her story. 

We are introduced to the djinn of the title in the first chapter. It is 1932 and the djinn is weeping, hiding away deep in the house. When he hears things happening beyond his retreat, he wanders out, but sees only a mess of abandoned items, trunks and clothes. Outside the house, he looks up at it and wails. We gradually discover what he is grieving and this also leads us to the story of the house and its sad fate. 

The writing here is lovely, drawing you into the story, as it uses the foreign words of its characters to add to the atmosphere. The djinn is interesting, a creature that moves about, obsessed with a past tragedy. The story as it gradually reveals itself is one of love and pain, one of moments of happiness and of great sadness. The setting of the house and its garden come to life for the reader, even in its abandoned rooms. 

The Unicorn

Finished September 23

The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch

This strange and eerie novel is set in a remote part of a country that may be Ireland, although it isn't clearly stated. Marion Taylor has answered an advertisement for a governess following an amicable but painful breakup. She is nearing 30 and unsure of whether her future holds a marriage or not. Part of why she found the advertisement appealing is the name of the home she is going to: Gaze Castle. But as the book opens, she finds that it is quite far from the nearest railway station and remote even from neighbours. She has uneasy feelings almost right away, fighting the urge to flee as she is driven to the home. 

The home is a rather ordinary, yet large house, not a castle, and she also soon finds that she hasn't been engaged to teach children, but rather to teach and be a companion for a woman similar in age to herself. There are other mysterious elements to the place, and she finds the roles of many of the other people there unclear. The woman she will work for is Hannah Crean-Smith, a woman who seems delicate in health, and never leaves the premises. The man who collected her, Gerald Scottow seems to be in charge, and may even be under orders to limit the activities and visitors to Mrs. Crean-Smith. 

She also finds that the husband of her employer is alive, but was injured badly in an incident that seems unclear on the cliffs near the house. One possibility is that his wife may have tried to kill him after being found in an act of infidelity. The chauffeur is Jamesie Evercreech, but he is also some sort of distant relative of Hannah's as is his sister Violet. Violet Evercreech seems to act as a housekeeper, with numerous "black maids with casts in their eyes and incomprehensible accents" that she seems to direct. There is also Denis Nolan, a man who seems to deal with animals as well as other unexpected tasks. 

The nearest neighbour is a recluse, an older man named Max Lejour and in the summer his daughter Alice and son Pip come to visit, as does a family friend Effingham Cooper. 

As Marion becomes more and more confused and unsettled by the atmosphere of the place, she thinks that she must make some sort of plan to free Hannah from this imprisonment. 

This is a story that relies on the geography and remoteness of the location, the odd characters, and the sense of foreboding that comes on Marion after encounters with certain people or elements. 

A book that draws you in, so that you need to know how things unfold. Murdoch is a master storyteller. 

The House of Whispers

Finished February 25

The House of Whispers by Laura Purcell

This novel has a touch of gothic and otherworldly. There are two timelines, but we aren't given dates for them. They are forty years apart, and both set at a remote house on the cliffs in Cornwall. 

The later timeline starts the novel, as Esther Stevens, now going by the name of Hester Why sets off on a coach for Cornwall where she has taken a position of nurse for an older woman. We gradually learn what and why she is fleeing, and she has an encounter on her journey that brings attention upon her, which she does not want. 

When she arrives at her destination, she finds the other servants a mix of friendly and taciturn, with one of them seeming a bit odd and unnerving. The woman she is looking after barely speaks, is frail, and seems to be in her own world. There is also a younger woman in the house, who is treated as if she is a child, although she is not one in age. 

Hester is also dealing with her own demons, as we discover quite early. She finds the various members of the household believing in superstitions around fairies, changelings, and God, that she has trouble reconciling with reality.

The earlier timeline takes place as a doctor and her adult daughter arrive at the house where he plans to begin an experimental treatment for consumption. The patients he has to begin this treatment are convicts, all suffering from consumption at a variety of stages. His daughter Louise is his assistant in this experiment, and both are grieving the loss of his wife and other daughters from the disease of consumption. 

Louise worries about her father, grieves the rest of her family, and has resigned herself to dedicating her life to her father's dream at the expense of having a family of her own. The maid that her father has hired is a woman with superstitions and odd behaviours that she isn't entirely comfortable with. 

As we gradually learn the links between these two times at this remote house, we also find ourselves seeing these two women who both care perhaps too much for those they serve and see how they react in their own way to loss. 

This is a book with lots of atmosphere, including the ever present sea and strange music. A very different read.