Castle Barebane

I liked this gothic melodrama for Aiken's writing style, her sardonic observations of the New York upper crust, and the appealing heroine.

It begins in New York, where Valla, a journalist, is engaged to Bennett. She's beginning to realise that she doesn't fit into his milieu and will never be welcomed by his family, so when her half-brother, Nils, asks her to go to England to take care of his children for a short time, she agrees. When she gets to England Valla finds her brother and his wife missing and their house for let. She finds the children in desperate straits and applies to their great aunts for help. They send Valla and the two children to stay in a dilapidated Scottish Castle looked after by a grumpy old woman.

There are a lot show more of plot threads, and some of them are ludicrous. Valla's brother Nils is an evil man, and his closest friend is even worse. There's a Jack the Ripper clone on the loose, the Beast of Bermondsey. Jannie, the younger child behaves very oddly. The old lady in the castle has a mysterious, tragic history. There's a helpful doctor who never wants to marry, and a gout-ridden magazine editor who is taken with Valla. Towards the end of the book it seems that Aiken has lost patience with her people and her plot. The threads converge and .... I don't want to spoil things!

Castle Barebane was a mess, but I enjoyed it. show less

Well-written opening, as a newly engaged girl realises how unfitted she is to be part of her fiancé's family. An urgent message takes her to the UK... and it becomes clear that the book is going to take an unpleasant turn, so I read the final chapter and was glad I hadn't bothered with the rest.

"Castle Barebane" by Joan Aiken is an older novel (published in 1976). The jacket cover and synopsis intrigued me. The novel was very well written. The plot, characters and setting were well thought out. A real "page turner" as I actually read the entire novel in two days.
The main character, Val Montgomery, is young, kind-hearted and confident. She is a women well ahead of her time in the 1880's. She has a promising career as a newspaper reporter in New York City. She is also engaged to Benet Allerton, a society lawyer. Due to extenuating circumstances, she finds herself in London. Hence, the plot of the novel begins. The only reason that I did not rate "Castle Barebane" 5 stars was due to the ending. It felt rushed and took away from show more the overall story. show less

Valla leaves her fiance in New York and goes to England to look after her niece and nephew. After a frantic search, ending in squalor, she takes them to Castle Barebane, a gothic setting in which murderers, madmen, love, and mystery haunt her.

Dark, foreboding, and full of suspense, yet its plot has greater depth, and evokes a greater empathy, than most other gothic stories I've read. I enjoyed this book immensely and have read it several times.

Val Montgomery searches for her missing brother and his wife, and ends up at a castle in Scotland with two abandoned children. Kind of dismal, gloomy, and creepy, but somehow engaging.