Solace House
The 500-odd pages whip by ... It's a bit overstuffed ... Maclean scrabbles a bit when he’s trying to gesture at the ineffable mind-mangling realms beyond time, space and puny human comprehension. But, like, that’s slightly the nature of those realms. Gothic, man. It tries too hard. It has to. If this stuff is your jam, you’ll love it ... There’s a clever and satisfying twist towards the end that even makes some sense of that terrible poetry.
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There are faint echoes of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History: a close-knit group of students become increasingly absorbed by esoteric ideas that reshape their understanding of the world ... Maclean expands his novel into stranger territory ... Draws confidently on Gothic traditions while incorporating elements of folk horror and speculative fiction ... Although it runs to more than 500 pages, Solace House sustains its atmosphere with remarkable consistency. Thoughtful, unsettling and ambitious, it is less interested in delivering conventional scares than in evoking a slow, disorientating collapse of reality itself.
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Sharp, unforgettable characters ... Visceral details are presented stroke by masterful stroke ... A chilling novel set in a haunted house, Solace House is about the fine line between grief and madness.
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