Starling House

I've read every novel that Alix E. Harrow has written, and I can honestly say that I've loved them all. Starling House is no exception. Harrow can write. I don't know the last time that I've had the honor of reading such atmospheric prose - even her sentences about a dingy old hotel room seem absolutely beautiful.

Starling House is a horror novel, except not really. It's a southern gothic novel, if we want to be particular about things. There's definitely a layer of horror here, though, but the book itself is not particularly scary. It's the horror of history, the horror of horrible things that happened every day in the not-so-distant past. The horror of slavery, of child-marriage, of murder, of being trapped in a place you have no power to leave from.

Our protagonist, Opal, lives a meager scrape of existence in tiny town called Eden. Horrible things have happened here, and they continue happening in the background of the novel. Eden feels like every minuscule town in the Southern US. We're introduced to the Starling House through Opal's dreams, and eventually through reality. At first, we're not sure if Starling House is haunted, sentient or both, but there's rumors upon rumors of the old place. Opal tracks them all down, and somewhere in the middle is the truth.

There's magic here. Magic, and dreams, and hopes, and longing. Starling House has it all.

I absolutely adored this novel. I think if obligations hadn't forced me to read this in chunks I could have read it all in one sitting. It is fantastic. I cannot recommend Harrow's work enough.