Randy’s latest suggestion for this year’s Countdown to Hallowe’en is a Horror novel set in Spain:Felicitas in Solis Animabus— Inscription found in Hyperion House: “Happiness only in their souls;” or, “Happiness only in sunlight.”After a period of distress and loss – the Recession bankrupted the architectural company for which she worked; her mother continued her tradition of nagging and fault-finding; a mental/emotional collapse – Callie (short for Calico) has found a husband, Mateo, his radiant daughter, Bobbie, and Hyperion House, their new home in the countryside of Spain. And what a home for an architect: Throughout the day, no room in the front of Hyperion House is ever dark, the shape of the building, the angle of the windows ingeniously designed by its architect builder to capture the sun, a gift from him to his wife.
But for every day there is a night, and Hyperion’s other side, nestled against a mountain, is in permanent darkness and presents a deep mystery for Callie to sound: The rooms appear to be smaller versions of the rooms in front, even the furniture similar. The keys to the back rooms are kept by the housekeeper, Rosita, who is reluctant to give them up, apparently reluctant to let her new mistress explore that portion of the house. And Callie is frightened by the dark – nyctophobic – and by the sense of other persons inhabiting these supposedly empty rooms. Why build such a house? And why the telescope that the Nationals removed during the Spanish Civil War? If it was a telescope, since to her trained eye the supporting system doesn’t appear sufficient for the weight of a telescope. And if not a telescope, what?
The plot and motivations in Nyctophobia present a weave that makes a more detailed description difficult without spoilers. Suffice to say that the secrets of Hyperion House are suited to merge with the secrets Callie keeps from her new family and to complicate her quest for happiness.
As with other recent haunted house novels, I suspect Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House was a conscious influence. Like Jackson’s Eleanor, Callie has a fraught relationship with her mother that undermines self-confidence, and a personal history of emotional instability. As Eleanor was a product of her time, so Callie is a product of the Oughts: Intelligent, knowledgeable, expert in her field, betrayed by an economy that left her adrift, unable to exercise her skill and creativity, eliminating the work that had sustained her self-reliance. She views it as a personal failure, a view supported by her mother, and so is unsure she deserves the luck of meeting and marrying Mateo, unsure even that she deserves happiness. And so she comes to Hyperion House rather like Eleanor arrived at Hill House, searching for home, trying to understand a series of incidents that threaten or disappoint, and ultimately facing a decision concerning her future.
Nyctophobia may need a second reading to fully understand how all the narrative strands merge: Hyperion House is a terrific invention, an eccentric house with a dark history neatly woven into the Spanish Civil War and which Fowler is able to describe without losing the reader. Callie’s mother might be a bit one-dimensional, but the other characters are fleshed out nicely and engaging.
Also recommended from Christopher Fowler: Hell Train
Related reading:
Hell House by Richard Matheson
The Shining by Stephen King
Soft Spoken by Lucius Shepard
The Harrowing by Alexandra Sokoloff
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters
