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Aycliffe spins a tale of love, and loss and dark family secrets and proves that some grand old homes have much more than skeletons hidden in the airing closets.
Charles Lancaster is shocked to learn he has inherited Hallinhag House, a centuries-old manor just outside the Lake District village of Howtown. Down on his luck, he sees this unexpected windfall as a blessing. Yet he soon discovers that something is terribly wrong at Hallinhag, now claimed by mould and decay but apparently occupied by a young girl. Through the diary entries of Dominic Lancaster, his grandfather and the last person to stay in the house, the terrible truth about Hallinhag is revealed.
The foreshadowed tension Charles brings to the story in the opening chapters is reminiscent of Susan Hill’s Woman in Black – a good old-fashioned thrill of a ghost story. As The Silence of Ghosts progresses, however, the comparison is soon diminished. The choice of Dominic’s diary entries to tell of the horror that lurks in Hallinhag means that many of the truly frightening scenes are told in retrospect and though Dominic does this honestly, capturing much of the fear he felt, it never reaches the height of tension that would have been possible in a more traditional telling. For me, the ghosts were rather too silent, and those who want a ghost story filled with spine-chilling tension may be disappointed. Still, this is a beautiful story. Well written, with moments of stunning imagery, you can’t help but be drawn to Dominic, injured early in World War II and sent to Hallinhag by his austere father to recuperate with only his young sister and a nurse for company. The love story between Dominic and Rose (his nurse) is tender and not without difficulty, and Aycliffe subtly reveals the toll of war upon the characters, the village and London.
The Silence of Ghosts is a tale of malevolence that outlasts death but is also a tender story of a wealthy man’s love for an ‘unsuitable’ woman in a time of turbulence and change.
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