Book review of Starling House by Alix E Harrow
Table Of Content
Harrow has tons of fun along the way, noting in Eleanor Starling’s Wikipedia page, for instance, that “director Guillermo del Toro has praised E. A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life. "It is constantly telling and obscuring many different variations of stories about itself."
External review score
The dying coal town is the fictional setting of Alix E. Harrow's "Starling House," and the smog of fading power and bad luck is enough to suffocate its residents, most of whom live in abject poverty. In the small town of Eden, Kentucky, rumors and legends surround the supposedly haunted property of Starling House and its enigmatic former residents. With the exception of Opal, the citizens of Eden are also fearful of the Starling land and its current inhabitant, Arthur Starling. Struggling to support herself and her younger brother, Jasper, Opal feels like an outsider in the community and frequently dreams of Starling House. One day, feeling physically drawn to the house, she approaches the gates and meets Arthur, who tells her to run away. The town of Eden blames its bad luck on Eleanor Starling, the mysterious 19th-century author who first owned Starling House.
About the Author
It’s been eleven years and forty-four days since I last opened that book. I came straight home from Mom’s funeral, dumped it into a doubled-up grocery bag along with half a pack of Newports, a moldy dream catcher, and a tube of lipstick, and shoved it all deep under my bed. But sinister forces are digging deeper into the buried secrets of Starling House, and Arthur’s own nightmares have become far too real. As Eden itself seems to be drowning in its own ghosts, Opal realizes that she might finally have found a reason to stick around. When she gets the chance to step inside Starling House–and make some extra cash for her brother’s escape fund–she can’t resist.
Editorial Reviews
'Starling House' Gothic fantasy novel depicts a fictional coal town's real-life horrors, dark past - WBUR News
'Starling House' Gothic fantasy novel depicts a fictional coal town's real-life horrors, dark past.
Posted: Tue, 03 Oct 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]
Carefully unpacking the institutionalized power dynamics of class and race, Harrow untangles the many mysteries of Starling House, revealing how powerful people and groups will twist the truth until the story suits their purposes. Despite this warning, however, Opal continues to feel drawn to Starling House and eventually takes on the position of housekeeper for the dilapidated property. She quickly learns that Starling House and its owner are just as mysterious as the people of Eden believe, but despite the ominous air of mystery that surrounds the place, Opal starts to feel at home there. Eleanor is also rumored to have killed her husband, John Gravely, and his two brothers. Since her mysterious death, Starling House has been continually inhabited by unique yet unrelated characters whose activities have raised suspicions that cultish elements of witchcraft and Satanism must be present amongst the residents of Eden. Written by Hugo Award–winning author Alix E. Harrow in 2023, Starling House is a Southern Gothic work of speculative fiction about finding a place to call home.
How many guests can sleep at Starling Lake House?
The story focuses on Opal, an impoverished woman struggling to free herself and her brother from their prejudiced small town. When she accepts a job as a housekeeper at the mysterious Starling House, she begins to fall for its equally mysterious inhabitant, Arthur Starling, as the property’s deeper secrets begin to reveal themselves. Exploring themes of truth, power, and choice, Harrow uses the novel to examine how the very act of storytelling can be used to grapple with the effects of the past.
Book excerpt: 'Starling House'
"I had to learn many things about my own family and about my own home in undergrad and grad school." "There's a line in 'Starling House' that I think sums up everything that I would want to say about the Gothic genre, which is, one girl's pain has been transmuted into generations of beautiful, terrible, unsettling art," Reid says. "That's what Gothic really is to me. It's this almost refuge for people who want to create meaningful and beautiful art from pain." In writing about class, Harrow joins a long tradition of authors writing Gothic fiction as a way to process the ills of society. "I think what I wanted to say about class and poverty is that poverty is a form of violence and horror in and of itself," Harrow says, "and that those experiences do emotional and physical harm." Guests will receive a rental agreement, which must be signed and returned directly to the property prior to arrival.
Opal works hard at Tractor Supply Company to try to save enough money to send her younger brother, Jasper, to a fancy boarding school. Their mother died a mysterious death, their father has never been in the picture and they live in a dingy motel room in the dying town of Eden, Kentucky. Opal is desperate to escape Eden, which offers nothing much besides two Dollar Generals and a strip-mined stretch of riverbank, thanks to the operations of nearby Gravely Power. They started abruptly when I was twelve or thirteen, just when all the characters in my books started manifesting magic powers or receiving coded messages or whatever; of course I was obsessed with them. But Opal, the main character of the book, desperately needs the money to get her brother out of poverty, so she takes a job at Starling House. ‘The Starling’ on Netflix is an emotional drama with a hint of well-timed comedy.
I don’t linger when I pass by the iron front gates, or look up with my heart riding high in my chest, hoping to catch a glimpse of that lonely amber light that seems to shine from some grander, stranger world, just for me. Everyone agrees that it’s best to ignore the uncanny mansion and its misanthropic heir, Arthur. A new month means its time for some of our favorite things — coats and totes full of the best new young adult books of September 2023. And the pain buried underneath Eleanor's story is at the core of what sickens the whole town.
A few residential neighborhoods around the city were also seemingly used for establishing shots near the beginning of the film as Lilly drives to work and narrowly misses hitting the bird that later torments her. Despite the film being set in California, filming was majorly undertaken in New York City, New York. The psychiatric institution where Jack is admitted also seems to be in the Big Apple, as is the grocery store where Lilly is seen working. And the pain buried underneath Eleanor’s story is at the core of what sickens the whole town. The history that comes bubbling up to the surface in “Starling House” is Kentucky’s involvement in slavery. So I don’t make up stories about Starling House or ask anyone else for theirs.
Opal finds herself increasingly intrigued by Arthur despite his odd ways and off-putting looks. But Gravely Power representative Elizabeth Baine, in hopes of obtaining the mineral rights to Arthur’s land, demands that Opal spy on Arthur and his residence, threatening Jasper’s future if she declines. The trauma of history is a bitter stain on the coal-dusted town of Eden, Kentucky. And while residents of the town may be determined to turn a blind eye, readers will find it impossible to look away.
The film’s production crew also spent a few days in California, where scenes featuring Lilly’s family home were likely filmed. Lensing was undertaken in the city of Calabasas, which is located in the Santa Monica Mountains region of southern California. “Women's anger is something that had to be shoved into horror, or really only had a place in horror and Gothic, because it was naturally antithetical to the way things were supposed to be,” Harrow says. Harrow’s Eden is notable for its looming and sinister manor owned by the reclusive Starling family. I figure dreams are like stray cats, which will go away if I quit feeding them.
But sometimes, right before I fall asleep, I see the black shadows of trees rising up the motel walls, though there’s nothing but asphalt and weeds out the window. I feel the hot breath of Beasts around me, and I follow them down, and down, to Underland. Since nobody would tell me the story of Starling House, I made up my own.
I wanted to see where she came from, prove to myself that she was real. I wanted to walk through her secret architecture, run my fingers over her wallpaper, see her curtains flutter in the breeze and believe, for a moment, that it was her ghost. BookPage is a recommendation guide for readers, highlighting the best new books across all genres as chosen by our editors. Starred (★) titles indicate a book that is exceptional in its genre or category. BookPage is editorially independent; any publisher-sponsored content is clearly labeled as such. "This is the first book that I set fully in, like committed to writing about Kentucky," Harrow says.
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