Catherine House: A Novel
“[A] delicious literary Gothic debut.” –THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, EDITORS' CHOICE
“Moody and evocative as a fever dream, Catherine House is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step.” – THE WASHINGTON POST
A Most Anticipated Novel by Entertainment Weekly • New York magazine • Cosmopolitan • The Atlantic • Forbes • Good Housekeeping • Parade • Better Homes and Gardens • HuffPost • Buzzfeed • Newsweek • Harper’s Bazaar • Ms. Magazine • Woman's Day • PopSugar • and more!
A gothic-infused debut of literary suspense, set within a secluded, elite university and following a dangerously curious, rebellious undergraduate who uncovers a shocking secret about an exclusive circle of students . . . and the dark truth beneath her school’s promise of prestige.
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Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds: prize-winning authors, artists, inventors, Supreme Court justices, presidents. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends, television, music, even their clothing must be left behind. In return, the school promises a future of sublime power and prestige, and that its graduates can become anything or anyone they desire.
Among this year’s incoming class is Ines Murillo, who expects to trade blurry nights of parties, cruel friends, and dangerous men for rigorous intellectual discipline—only to discover an environment of sanctioned revelry. Even the school’s enigmatic director, Viktória, encourages the students to explore, to expand their minds, to find themselves within the formidable iron gates of Catherine. For Ines, it is the closest thing to a home she’s ever had. But the House’s strange protocols soon make this refuge, with its worn velvet and weathered leather, feel increasingly like a gilded prison. And when tragedy strikes, Ines begins to suspect that the school—in all its shabby splendor, hallowed history, advanced theories, and controlled decadence—might be hiding a dangerous agenda within the secretive, tightly knit group of students selected to study its most promising and mysterious curriculum.
Combining the haunting sophistication and dusky, atmospheric style of Sarah Waters with the unsettling isolation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, Catherine House is a devious, deliciously steamy, and suspenseful page-turner with shocking twists and sharp edges that is sure to leave readers breathless.
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Community Reviews
Still trying to comprehend this story...might change this rating later. Could go up, could go down.
1. I normally love gothic academic books where people are shitty and tragedy strikes, but there was just something about this book that didn't work for me. I think the main character was just so intensely unlikable that I had nothing to connect with her over. Even unlikable characters usually have something that I can latch on to, but I never really felt like this with the main character here. I also never really felt like I got to know her. Everything about her narration felt almost like I was looking at her through a haze, and maybe that was why I struggled to connect with her as well. I also felt that the constant description of wine and being drunk got sort of excessive after a while - like, I saw the point that the author was trying to make, but there was just still something that didn't sit right with me about it.
2. The narration also just sometimes felt like a series of random scenes that didn't always contribute to the plot or really any development. I was often left with a sense of being like "what was that?" after scenes, and imo this book could have used tighter editing and cutting. I would have loved to get to know the side characters better as actual people rather than people coming in and out of the main character's life without much about their own stuff going on outside of that.
3. The whole situation with the plasm, which is a central component of the plot, never felt like it was fully explained. I still couldn't really tell you what plasm is, and maybe that is the point, that it's something undefinable, but for something that is so important, that seems a bit like an oversight. I didn't get the point of the experiments on the student body and how that really affected them.
4. Look, I like a good ambiguous ending as much as the next ending, but this one just didn't seem complete. I literally turned the page expecting something else because it was so jarring and like the author stopped writing in the middle of the book. So I guess I just felt like there was no satisfaction in the ending. ...actually, you know what? I think I felt like there was no character growth. Ines ended up sort of in the same place where she had started. Nothing was really learned or developed. Perhaps that's why I didn't feel satisfied with the ending.
Anyway, I gave it 3 stars instead of 2 despite all these issues because I did want to keep reading to find out what was going down in the school, and the atmosphere the author describe was very good. I saw someone describe the book as "claustrophobic" and I 100% agree that was the sense that came across as I was reading it. I really enjoyed that aspect of the novel.
Reading the blurb for this book, which describes a secretive school that graduates powerful people, immediately made me think of that episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with the fraternity whose members got their power from a demon in their basement to whom they had to offer human sacrifices. So, here's a spoiler: there's no demon in the basement of Catherine House. What there is, isn't quite clear. It has something to do with a "new material" called "plasm" which, if I understood correctly somehow allows all things to be connected. The science behind it wasn't all that important to me.
Rather than the specifics of what's going on in the lab, this book is anchored by the atmosphere of the school. Full of lush descriptions of damp rooms with peeling wallpaper and mismatched furniture and meals made of strange combinations of food, the sense of something a step beyond shabby gentility emerges. Add to that some students who are, shall we say, very focused on plasm, and one gets a decidedly gothic feel.
For readers who enjoy a sense of nervous dread about what happens on the next page, this book will pull you to the end, while you nervously look over your shoulder.
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