Published in hardback 5th March 2020 by Mantle.
Audio book narrated by Sarah Lambie.
From the cover of the book:
August 1939.Thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright is tasked with the evacuation and safekeeping of the natural history museum’s collection of mammals. Once she and her exhibits arrive at Lockwood Manor, however, where they are to stay for the duration of the war, Hetty soon realizes that she’s taken on more than she’d bargained for.
Protecting her charges from the irascible Lord Lockwood and resentful servants is work enough, but when some of the animals go missing, and worse, Hetty begins to suspect someone – or something – is stalking her through the darkened corridors of the house.
As the disasters mount, Hetty finds herself falling under the spell of Lucy, Lord Lockwood’s beautiful but clearly haunted daughter. But why is Lucy so traumatized? Does she know something she’s not telling? And is there any truth to local rumours of ghosts and curses?
Part love story, part mystery, The Animals at Lockwood Manor by Jane Healey is a gripping and atmospheric tale of family madness, long-buried secrets and hidden desires.
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As the storm clouds gather over Europe, and war seems inevitable, the Natural History Museum in London takes the decision to evacuate many of its precious exhibits to the countryside. Thirty-year-old Hetty Cartwright finds herself raised from the ranks of volunteer to accompany the museum's mammal collection to Lockwood Manor, where it will be housed for the duration of the war.
Hetty is concerned about her ability to keep the collection safe, and the residents of Lockwood Manor make her task an arduous one. Self-important widower Lord Lockwood appears to view the specimens as part of his own private collection, and the household staff are unfriendly and uncooperative. Her only solace is the friendship she feels developing between herself and Lord Lockwood's fragile daughter Lucy.
Tales of hauntings and curses nip at Hetty's nerves, and when some of the specimens seem to move on their own, and others begin to go missing, she starts to doubt her own senses. Does danger really stalk these dark corridors, and are the tales of madness within the Lockwood family true? Lucy certainly seems traumatised, and when the bombs begin to fall on Lockwood, Hetty is slowly consumed by love for this tormented young woman, and the need to protect her from the ghosts of her past.
Jane Healy brings alive twentieth century Gothic in this story, by mixing classic elements of feelings of underlying menace and things that go bump in the night, with an authentically imagined World War II setting. Lockwood Manor with its faded grandeur, and resident dysfunctional family closely connected with scandal and gossip, make for the perfect haunted mansion, and the creepy, otherworldly vibes are ramped up to the max by the addition of a collection of weird and wonderful stuffed animals, and all the ephemera that go with them from the dusty halls of the Natural History Museum.
Healy plays with the notions of hauntings in a psychological, and literal sense, through the lives of Hetty and Lucy, who alternate in narrating the story. They find kinship among the exhibits when they are thrown together, and friendship inevitably develops into something more. Healy portrays their growing closeness beautifully, while weaving around them threads of shocking family secrets, and mysteries to be solved with impressive skill for a debut.
Themes of being trapped and chased, especially where male control is concerned, run through the story, and these work really well with the topics of women's freedom and forbidden love that are central to the novel. There are also lovely echoes of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, but from the point of view of Bertha Rochester, and the unscrupulous housekeeper definitely has a du Maurier's Mrs Danvers vibe, all of which add to the discomfiting atmosphere admirably.
The narration of the audio book by Sarah Lambie is handled well, and with expression, but her voices for Hetty and Lucy are almost identical, which does make for moments of confusion. I think in a story like this, with two central characters driving the action, it would have been lifted by having two individual voice actors - one for Hetty and one for Lucy - but overall the narration is very enjoyable.
It is a fine example of Gothic reimagined, well paced and thoroughly compelling, and I look forward to reading more from Jane Healy.
The Animals at Lockwood Manor is available to buy now in hardcover, paperback, ebook and audio formats now.
About the author:
The Ophelia Girls is her second novel. Her first, The Animals at Lockwood Manor, was published in 2020 and won the Historical Writers' Association Debut Crown Award.
She lives in Edinburgh.
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