I just finished reading The Death of Jane Lawrence and I am knocked the fuck out.How to talk about this book in words that don’t reveal the fever-tongued spells that Caitlin Starling weaves in and through the walls of benighted Lindridge Hall? If belief and perception forms reality then this is one story that needs to slowly stitch itself into the fabric of your being one long deliciously agonizing seam at a time. Starling has built a truly startling gothic narrative that takes the foundations of the genre as cursed as they might be and folds the blueprints up into new and searingly horrifying shapes. Then she sets them down in front of you to puzzle out like one of the titular characters mathemagical theorems where when you reach the solution, the sum of all the bloodsoaked and haunting parts that are set in motion, you are presented with a constellation of yet to be uncharted questions revolving around the answer you thought was to be the crux of the matter. In short, this book is a narrative triumph with characters built from but not dedicated to both their traumas and that of the world around them. I cannot recommend this book enough. Starling has written a haunted mansion classic for the future generations to dissect and puzzle over and I am only just now, with the trembling paroxysms of a story recently finished starting to subside, beginning to see all the shapes it does and will possibly entail.
If you want to stumble down these same corridors shaking candelabra in hand you can get a copy HERE