WhiskeyintheJar reviewed Unspeakable Things by Elizabeth Hand
Gothic vibes but felt unfinished and unexplained
3 stars
I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review
I wanted to bite someone, to draw blood. To run and never stop.
It's after the first World War and Olivia is coming of age in Cornwall with her struggling to still have a career actor and playwright father and his companion, Martin. She loves the moors and dressing as a man and when she meets Tasmin, her “Oliver” finds it's match in “Tommy”. When her cousin gets sent to them to rethink his got caught misbehavior, she suddenly finds herself at a houseparty and getting caught up in Tasmin's dreams, fighting to keep secrets, and the naivety of youth's thinking of invincibility.
That thread of power that hummed between us had been spun into a web. We were invisible, seen yet not known. We were …
I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review
I wanted to bite someone, to draw blood. To run and never stop.
It's after the first World War and Olivia is coming of age in Cornwall with her struggling to still have a career actor and playwright father and his companion, Martin. She loves the moors and dressing as a man and when she meets Tasmin, her “Oliver” finds it's match in “Tommy”. When her cousin gets sent to them to rethink his got caught misbehavior, she suddenly finds herself at a houseparty and getting caught up in Tasmin's dreams, fighting to keep secrets, and the naivety of youth's thinking of invincibility.
That thread of power that hummed between us had been spun into a web. We were invisible, seen yet not known. We were inviolable.
The Cornish setting with it's winds and cliffs and the old rambling estate helped to set the Gothic tone all before the mystery and murder came onto the pages. It was all hushed as the genre tends to keep it's cards to the vest with first person point-of-view to keep the reader in the dark about certain characters' motivations. Olivia worked as an eighteen year old coming into her own power as conventionally good looking and being the focus of men's dark desires. Her lack of interest and wanting to be left alone with Tasmin to make a life gave a little different direction and dimension but the same Gothic beats were all there with Tasmin being clouded with murder-y shadows.
“[...You like to see how close you can get to the edge of things without falling. Not as close as you believed, as it turns out....]”
The pace picked up when Olivia, Tasmin, and her cousin go to the houseparty and we get outside influences affecting the Oliver and Tommy bubble. The host Rex de Voil with his standoffish but seemingly drawn to Olivia (and drawer full of women's hairbrushes) brings in some more dread but as things picked up to come to a head, the ending felt like a whiff to me. The slow burn that was finally leading somewhere suddenly cuts off with numerous threads left dangling, left to the reader to decide if Olivia's youthful sense of power will be her downfall or if Oliver and Tommy will succeed in all the ways they hope to. It was hard not feeling like when the story finally was starting to go somewhere it abruptly ended, it didn't give the feeling of “left to your imagination” but rather, “leaving it for the sequel”, making me feel like I didn't get much of a story. I was drawn the most to Olivia's father's companion Martin and Rex de Voil's housekeeper, would love to read their novellas. Some Gothic atmosphere, murder and mystery, but ultimately, felt unfinished and unexplained.