Rating: 3 Stars
“I did a lot of reading of the kinds of books I wanted Charlotte to aspire to, such as Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, and Jane Eyre,” says Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling author Michael Boccacino. “For me it was less about setting the novel in a specific time or place and more about trying to capture a certain feeling. The book is really a pastiche of a lot of disparate genres.”
This debut novel by Michael Boccacino is a Victorian Gothic tale, a horror novel with vividly written images. It’s part fantasy and part horror. The books moves between being scary and bizarre. For readers into horror, fantasy and paranormal, this is a good fit.
In Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling , the nanny to the young Darrow boys is found gruesomely murdered in the forest. Charlotte Markham, the recently hired governess, is left to care for the children on her own. Charlotte likes spending time outside. There’s an alternate world in the forest where things can’t die, called The Ending. Lily Darrow, the spirit of the boys’ mother is there at the House of Darkling inside The Ending. Enchantment, mystery and danger lurk there. The boys become trapped in the House of Darkling. Charlotte and the boys’ father work together to rescue them from The Ending. What must they do to get the boys back unharmed?
“About seven years ago, I dreamt of an English governess standing on the side of a dirt road with her two young charges as they consulted a homemade map,” says Boccacino. “They were debating whether or not to enter a forest up ahead and I knew, as dreamers often do, that something terrible awaited them in the woods. I remember being fascinated by where they were going, and the next morning I wrote the first draft of what would become chapter four. I took a trip to London after I had done a few drafts, and that really helped me explore some of the finer details of Everton and the House of Darkling that I hadn’t been able to capture previously.””
“Despite the genre trappings, the heart of the book comes from my experiences with my mother as she died of cancer,” says Boccacino. “As I was finishing the novel, I discovered an audiotape she had recorded in the months leading up to her death with a message for me. In many ways it was like she had come back into my life, if only for a little while, just as Lily Darrow does for her children. It was very surprising and moving to listen to my mother’s voice.”
Boccacino’s research for the book was mainly into the clothing worn in Victorian and Edwardian England. He mostly searched through online image databases.
Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling: A Novel by Michael Boccaci. Paperback: 320 pages. Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Original edition (July 24, 2012). Language: English ISBN-13: 978-0062122612 $14.99
