Hawthorn: A Scottish Ghost Story
Hawthorn by Elaine Thomson is the first in a planned quartet of ghost stories, all set in Scotland. This introduction to the series is set in the autumn of 1871 in the weeks leading up to the Gaelic festival Samhain – 31st October. It is a time when the barrier between the living and the dead is at its thinnest, allowing spirits to return briefly to the mortal realm.
The narrative purports to be The True Account of Robert Sutherland concerning the Haunting of Leask House in the County of Caithness. Our narrator is in the Inverness District Asylum, where he writes his story looking back. He is a surveyor and has accepted an assignment helping to chart one of Scotland’s most remote north-easterly counties. After an accident, he is taken to the neighbouring Leask House, home of the Sinclairs, to recuperate.
This is a beautifully written recreation of Victorian Gothic, akin to Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black. The setting is eerie, bleak and atmospheric. There is nothing more fear-inducing than being cut off from civilisation by a hostile landscape. Sutherland is an interesting narrator. As a scientist, he takes a rational perspective – but comes to learn that ‘there are more things in heaven and earth’.
Many features come straight from Victorian sensationalist fiction: secrets, madness, murder, ghosts. Sutherland is a working man, educated at the University and employed to chart the world according to the strictures of science. The Sinclairs, alternatively, have had easy access to privilege, wealth and servants – but a mix of unwise investments and decadent over-spending by the male family members has eroded this. As the two worlds collide, an exciting story emerges.
Overall, this is a very entertaining read: well-written, engaging and suspenseful. Lovers of Victorian Gothic, of ghost stories on a dark winter’s evening or of creepy folklore will thoroughly enjoy it.
