Catherine Burns (1)

Marion and her brother John live together in their childhood home, in a seaside tourist town in Northern England. Their parents died decades ago, but stupid, dependent Marion never left home, never experienced life, and is now regretting it. John had been a teacher but was fired and came home with his reputation ruined.
He's an angry, manipulative man who Marion both loves and fears, just as she feared everyone in her family. She is also frightened every time she hears those screams that come show more from the cellar, where John spends his time teaching math and science to the Eastern European women he tricks into coming to their house.
This story is told by Marion in her own memories and viewpoint, of her childhood with her cold parents who preferred their intelligent, deviant son over spineless Marion, and her shame over having nothing to love but stuffed animals. Marion takes the reader from pity to horror, and we see that she's more like her brother than she will admit. Highly recommended. show less

50-something Marion Zetland lives with her older brother, John, in a cluttered, crumbling manor house in a down-at-the-heels northern English resort town. John and Marion inherited the house and a comfortable income from their parents. As a young man John pursued a teaching career, which ended abruptly in scandal, and he has lived at home ever since. Marion, who pursued neither education nor career, has been a doormat all her life: bullied as a child by her brother and her schoolmates, show more relentlessly mocked and belittled by her emotionally withholding mother, she has grown into an indecisive, timid, fearful and agonizingly unassertive middle-age woman lacking any sense of self-esteem or self-worth. Overweight and ashamed of her appearance, she spends her days in aimless lethargy, watching television and daydreaming. It is true that Marion cares for her brother, cooking his meals and performing household chores, but one thing she knows for certain is that she must never go into the basement. The basement is John’s domain, and what he does down there with “the visitors” Marion doesn’t want to know. In fact, if she has nurtured any kind of talent at all over the years, it is an aptitude for remaining wilfully oblivious to things that are too painful or odious to acknowledge. John’s shameful secret drives the action, and through the early chapters Burns uses flashbacks to fill gaps and hint at what is really going on. Eventually a crisis forces Marion out of her lethargy and gives her no choice but to face a secret she has spent her entire adult life trying to ignore. Catherine Burns’ first novel generates enormous tension and suspense. It is also truly creepy and disturbingly plausible. Admittedly, we never grow to like Marion. In many ways she is as loathsome as her brother: a reluctant partner in reprehensible acts whose inaction is criminal and repugnant. But we do cheer her on, as she climbs out of her shell and turns the tables on a world that has treated her like shit her whole life and to which she owes absolutely nothing. In the end, Marion’s survival comes across as a moral victory, the only one this bracingly cynical and hugely entertaining novel is prepared to offer its reader. show less

Marion is a sixty-something woman who isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer. She lives with her older brother John in their childhood home. John spends much of his time down in the basement. Marion doesn't like to think about what's going on down in the basement, and mostly ignores the occasional muffled screams and moans emanating therefrom.

This is a creepy novel, and it felt entirely plausible. It reminded me of a tale by Shirley Jackson or Patricia Highsmith, with sociopathic characters show more hanging onto the fringes of normalcy, with the deep foreboding of an undercurrent of evil beneath the mundane details of the everyday.

Recommended.

3 stars show less

I had this as a car read, so the reading happened over the course of maybe a year. That's alright though since it's fine (and probably preferable) to savor in small portions. I think some of the stories should really be heard by everyone. A few brought a tear to the eye, a few were very much "what the ...." moments. The collection is excellent and my favorite story was probably by Darryl McDaniels - D.M.C. of Run-D.M.C.