The
Room Beyond by Stephanie Elmas is a ghost story. When Serena arrives in
Marguerite Avenue to apply for a job, she is intrigued to find as she walks the
street that next door to number 32 in number 36. Strangely, number 34 does not seem to exist.
A mere curiosity, perhaps?
Also
a curiosity is the job that Serena is seeking. She is applying to be the nanny,
the companion, the teacher or perhaps the partner in crime of Beth who,
Stephanie Elmas tells us, is just four years old. This little girl is rather
odd. She has only just graduated from toddler status, but throughout the tale
she seems to display the maturity, vocabulary and sensibility of middle age,
let alone precocious adulthood. Serena is intrigued from the start by the
origins of this little girl, and she does not believe everything she is told.
Beth’s
apparent wisdom beyond her years may test some readers’ ability to suspend
belief. But there are rewards for those who do, because The Room Beyond becomes
an engaging read, not least because Author Stephanie Elmas’s style is always
lucid and clear, and yet can offer a telling turn of phrase. When books include
a child as a principal character, writers tend to use the implied innocence as
a vehicle for delivering statements that no-one else dare say, or noting
observations that the mere conventional either miss or fear. Mercifully,
Stephanie Elmas just avoids over-using Beth’s child status, though she remains
very much at the centre of the developing story.
A
time shift takes us back to 1892, to a time when number 34 Marguerite Avenue
definitely did exist. We get to know the Whitestones and the Edens, Mrs Hubbard
who cooks and several characters, Miranda, Lucinda, Tristan and Alfonso
included, whose lives become intimately intertwined. There is intrigue in this
street, where much goes on behind the curtained windows.
Back
in the present day Marguerite Avenue, Serena gets the live-in job offered by
the Hartreve family and thus enters the household to get to know little Beth,
whose hidden origins immediately interest the new nanny. Then there is a
discovery that Eva, a morose teenager, knows much about the toddler’s birth and
is partially willing to talk. Eva’s revelations ought to be momentous, but
Serena takes them in her stride, a response we soon begin to associate with
her. Eva is a strange, waif-like, almost ghostly youngster, but we hardly ever
seem to get to know her as she drifts in and out of the story.
The
character of Serena, the modern-day narrator, is intriguing. She’s an injured
young woman. She lost her parents in a road accident. She herself is scarred
and harbours a morbid fear of glass. Even more intriguing about Serena is her
rather unpredictable impetuosity. When she feels an urge, she gives its
expression free reign and, throughout, she displays an almost rampant sexuality
that simply will not give “no” as an answer. Serena meets a number of possible
liaisons and, when the fancy takes her, liaises. One particular encounter gives
rise to something that develops like an obsession for Serena, who as a result
becomes ever more obsessed with the non-existence of the house next door. Who
might have lived there, and for what reasons it might have been removed from
history? Perhaps it still exists. Perhaps we merely convince ourselves that
it’s not there. And if all of this is not enough, we have another character who
paints black paintings that hang in a house full of eccentrics!
Back
at the end of the nineteenth century, there is yet another strange figure.
Walter Balanchine is part tramp, part wizard, part psycho-analyst, part
éminence-grise. He wanders in and out of the story, leaving enigma and mystery
wherever he treads. Like the present-day Beth, he seems to appear whenever
something more than the expected might transpire.
Overall,
The Room Beyond is a satisfying, but un-demanding read. With so many
characters, two time periods and several settings, we could never expect to reach
an end where all the ideas are worked out, all the loose ends tied up.
Stephanie Elmas’s style remains a delight and so the text always flows past and
through its events with ease. But by the end, for this to be fiction of its
genre, there may be rather too little tension, alongside too little of interest
to excite literary interest. But The Room Beyond does present an interesting,
engaging tale that is well told. Stephanie Elmas, herself, cites a debt to Mary Elizabeth Braddon,
who wrote mysterious, eye-popping works that sent middle-class housewives
flying to the bookshops. The Room Beyond hopes to emulate this success by
presenting a new gothic Victorian sensation drama, but with the present day
entwined within. Via the character of Serena, Stephanie Elmas may well have
achieved her goal.
One On One by Philip Spires is now available
One On One by Philip Spires is now available
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