Edith Holler by Edward Carrey with Joe.
Occasionally, the front cover of a book can be so striking that it demands your attention and lingers in your mind until you give it the attention that it craves. Ever since I began working at Books on the Hill a couple of months ago, I have been transfixed by the spooky illustration on the dust jacket of Edith Holler by Edward Carey - a book that has stared down at me from the horror fiction shelf as I have sat at the till serving customers - and recently I decided to dive into this weird and wonderful novel.
The story is set in Norwich in 1901. Within the narrative, the city is renowned as the home of the infamous Beetle Spread (which is just as disgusting as it sounds though thankfully just a figment of Carey's warped imagination) that is enjoyed by the people of England as a condiment pasted upon toast. Our titular character Edith is famous in her own right, forbidden from leaving her family's theatre under any circumstance, observed by the townspeople through a window and only able to communicate with the theatre's outsiders through her mimed performances. She is twelve years old and has never known anything outside of the walls of her father's theatre, told since birth that if she leaves then the theatre itself with crumble to ruins, destroying all the people and objects that she has ever known.
If you are beginning to think that this story sounds morbid, creepy and dark then you would be correct in your assumption. Carey has succeeded in penning an eerie tale akin to the gothic unease of Shirley Jackson, sprinkled with elements of Tim Burton and Alfred Hitchcock. The author has received praise from Margaret Attwood and Olga Togarczuk and it is obvious why: he creates narratives that interweave folklore and horror propped up by characters that sometimes demand empathy and sometimes demand repulsion. With Edith Holler, Carey has crafted a unique work of fiction that somehow blends the unease of Iain Banks’s 1984 novel The Wasp Factory with the unhinged atmosphere of Ti West and Mia Goth’s 2022 film Pearl.
In a story filled with melancholy and touching moments, Edith’s perception of herself is perhaps the most upsetting aspect of the novel. Her worldview has been warped by her isolation and the manipulative nature of the adults who ‘care’ for her, and the reader sees first-hand how this has affected Edith in the moments when she chooses to look inwards:
I look a bit washed out, a bit rag doll you might say. My skin is very pale, almost all white. My own hair is a sort of greyish red, somewhat fair but a dull colour, and sometimes seems as ashy as my flesh, and so it may be said I am one colour altogether. Except my eyes, which, like Father's, are a very pale blue. 'You look like you've seen a ghost' is a common enough observation. 'You look like a ghost' is not unheard-of either.
Well, then, if I am monochrome I do embrace it. I clothe myself in greys and whites. I am perhaps a little mouldy, a touch mildewed, slightly foxed; I am an old book, a little yellowed, mothlike. I do need, probably, a little airing out.
A particular quirk of the book that aids its uniqueness and creepiness is its use of illustrations. These are spectacularly weird and unsettling: insects and ghouls and skeletons are depicted alongside sketches of the theatre's paintings and stage backdrop. The illustrations, despite their macabre nature, feel reminiscent of a children's book and this is surely used by Carey as a tool to remind the reader that our protagonist is a twelve-year-old girl.
Edith is positioned as a character who is ‘spectated’ by the townsfolk; a subject of gossip, folktales and ridicule. Yet Edith is also a ‘spectator’. She is extremely curious and constantly strives to learn as much as she can about the world around her. This leads to some fascinating insights into her view of Norwich, the only place in the world that she has any real concept of. Edith views Norwich as a place of awe and wonderment, the centre of the universe. Yet her extensive reading means that she knows the history of the city and thus understands that her enchantment with the city is not the whole story. This leads to the following passage:
What else was Norwich but a city of looms? Our great history is built on wool, we are a weaving people. Or perhaps I should say we were a weaving people, but we came to the machinery too late, we mechanised our spindles too long after everyone else, and so we lost to Manchester and Leeds and other places which had so much coal on their doorsteps. They took our clothing from us, and we were left naked and hungry. Down fell Norwich, once the second greatest city in the country, down the list it tumbled, until at last we picked ourselves up again, quite literally by our bootstraps. Where we used to be all clothing, now we do shoes and boots; we have fallen, you see, much closer to the ground. A little half inch of sole protects us from the unforgiving street.
Through fear of ruining the book for anyone who is intrigued enough to pick it up, I have avoided explaining the plot in any great detail. I do feel, however, that it would be remiss of me to fail to mention that it is a story that can be interpreted in many different ways. Perhaps it is a traditional ghost story revolving around a ‘haunted house’ in the form of a theatre. Or maybe it is an exploration of the impact of isolation and myth-telling on a young girl with an overactive imagination. Or is the story instead a take on mental illness and the true meaning of madness? As I progressed through the novel, I was trying to piece together the clues to see if I could work out which interpretation of the story’s purpose was correct, but I now believe that there is no clear-cut answer. This is one of the reasons why I appreciated the story so much; it was incredibly satisfying to be led through the mysterious and mystical world of the theatre by Edith, a character whose own perception of the world was simultaneously flawed and mesmerising:
As the spiders spidered their great massacring, so did I spider in the dark of my dreams, spinning a horror tale by candlelight.