Return to Wyldcliffe Heights

 

Return to Wyldcliffe Heights / Carol Goodman
NY: William Morrow, c2024.
320 p.

A perfect choice for a Halloween read, Goodman's latest book returns to her academic, writerly themes for a shivery story. 

Agnes Corey is a young woman working in a small publishing house - a dream, really, as this is the publisher of her favourite book, "The Secret of Wyldcliffe Heights", a book many young women were drawn to over the years. It came to her through her mother's obsession with it, a mother with psychiatric issues whose relationship with Agnes is troubled and mostly estranged. 

But Agnes finds herself in an unexpected role - the author, Veronica St. Clair, has always refused to write a sequel, but suddenly decides she needs an assistant to take dictation on that long stalled sequel. Agnes gets the nod. 

St. Clair needs a secretary, as she's blind, following a fire at the real Wyldcliffe Heights, which also killed her father. The house used to be an asylum for troubled girls, complete with a chilling legend about Red Bess, a mass murderer said to haunt the house and grounds. But now it's just Veronica and her staff, keeping both her and this sprawling pile going. 

Agnes arrives to find a gothic manse on a hill with locked gates, groundman with gun, dark and cold hallways with strange passageways and a spooky attic, a surly housekeeper, and a promise of confidentiality made to Veronica. But she also has a secretive laptop and phone provided by her publisher, to keep them updated on any progress with their only money-making author. The past and the present collide as Agnes learns more about what really happened at Wyldcliffe Heights all those years ago and how much of the book was based in reality or imagination. And it has a strange connection to Agnes, too, the narrative of the sequel tunneling into her dreams. 

This is a real gothic, with all the mystery and danger you'd expect - there is also the town and townspeople, who have a whole festival celebrating Red Bess and the dangerous legend, which comes to life on Halloween. There are a couple of townspeople who help Agnes but many more who seem prickly and suspicious. And Agnes is wondering if she is really as stable as she pretends to be, after all. 

With the action of this book all based in a novel and its sequel, with tawdry New York life colouring the past, and so much riding on a publishing house, it's a very bookish book. Women's lives and their autonomy is also a huge theme in the story, both past and present. This is a dense mystery that bears deeper examination - you might find yourself flipping back to check on a story that's being told differently a few chapters later. I found it engrossing - loved the characters, whether they were 'likeable' or not - the setting was fantastic, both New York and Wyldcliffe Heights, and I really enjoyed the way that all the stories eventually interlock and connect the varied characters. Even many of the side characters were fully drawn and interesting on their own. Lots of great thematic content for discussion here, as well as being a great read for Halloween season.