The Book Tower

‘Well then…’ He coughs and plants one foot inside the car as if to go. Then he glances at the towering house, the turrets, and the gargoyles that seem to hold the bricks together around the crenellations. ‘Great place’, he says. ‘Fascinating.’ He pauses. I think I see him shiver.

I’m creating a new genre of fiction and I’m calling it psychological decaying mansion. Two excellent recent novels that fit into this category are The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield and The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Usually set in the later half of the last century, these novels observe events in once grand and prosperous homes, now reduced to dark, shuttered rooms and ghosts, oh so many ghosts. The latest in this genre is The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams, a first novel that was nominated for last year’s Costa prize.

This time the crumbling family home is occupied by a reclusive elderly lady called Ginny, a former expert in the field of lepidoptera. After forty seven years away, her sister Vivien suddenly returns. Ginny begins to dip into the memories of their childhood, growing up with their eccentric and moth-obsessed father and their alcoholic and raving mother.

Ginny proves a worthy addition to the school of the unreliable narrator, and Adams is extremely skilful at only hinting at the terrible insanity deep within her. And she also shows the potential of a novelist eager to play with their reader. There are times when it is unclear where the narrative is going, what exactly has happened in the tangled past and what Ginny is really capable of. And you will learn an awful lot about moths from this novel.

Although The Behaviour of Moths took for me a very long time to get going, the novel became extremely gripping as I became immersed in the development of this most odd of families. Unfortunately the conclusion is far from satisfactory. The reasons for Vivien’s return are never properly explained, and there isn’t nearly enough interaction between the two sisters when they reunite in old age. And whilst many threads of the book are deliberately left open ended Adams doesn’t succeed in making them fascinating enough. But still a worthy read, and still an author to watch out for.