The Company
“The reader is therefore advised to proceed with caution. What tricks lie in this narrative are never evident or foretold. Indeed one of the only reasons to read it, aside from that of satisfying the most morbid of curiosities…”
Long after the Braithwhite family passed on, a narrative penned by Lucy Braithwhite was discovered in their abandoned home in Devonshire. Lucy recalls her ideal childhood in Devon playing on the moors with her brother John. Gradually unfolding through the narrative are details of a terrible accident with lasting impact. London, 1870: Braithwhite & Company is the lifeblood of the Braithwhite family, yet tragedy haunts the family with deaths and illness. Mother, John, and Lucy, the only remaining family, trust Mr. Luckhurst to manage their successful wallpaper company. But he dies suddenly, leaving the family floundering. Mr. Rivers, Mr. Luckhurst’s assistant, inserts himself into the family to manage the Company, inexplicably knowing much of their private affairs. But Lucy is suspicious while he charms Mother and John.
The Company’s success comes from the lush, stunning greens, blues, and yellows in the wallpaper it produces. But these colors are enhanced by copper arsenite from their Devon mines. While the family and the Company are under attack from the media and the public over the arsenic in their wallpaper, John and Mr. Rivers refuse to bend to public ‘sentiment’.
The wallpaper adorning the family’s walls becomes a character – the birds, vines, and foliage change with the light, and the bold patterns seem to take on a life of their own. Lucy is unsettled and disturbed by the wallpaper. Her paranoia is everywhere on the pages – the ultimate unreliable narrator. What role is the poisonous wallpaper playing on her psyche and her ill family? Is Mr. Rivers the sinister man she suspects? A wonderfully creepy Victorian tale to chill the reader.
