Staff Pick
This book will captivate you and creep you out, but in the best way. It’s like a grown-up, macabre version of The Secret Garden. Recommended By Britt A., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
For fans of Shirley Jackson, Neil Gaiman, Roald Dahl, and Edward Gorey, a beguiling and disarming debut novel from an award-winning British author about a mysterious group of children who appear to a disfigured recluse and his country doctor—and the startling revelations their behavior evokes.
In a sprawling estate, willfully secluded, lives Morgan Fletcher, the disfigured heir to a fortune of mysterious origins. Morgan spends his days in quiet study, avoiding his reflection in mirrors and the lake at the end of his garden. One day, two children, Moira and David, appear. Morgan takes them in, giving them free reign of the mansion he shares with his housekeeper Engel. Then more children begin to show up.
Dr. Crane, the town physician and Morgans lone tether to the outside world, is as taken with the children as Morgan, and begins to spend more time in Morgans library. But the children behave strangely. They show a prescient understanding of Morgans past, and their bizarre discoveries in the mansion attics grow increasingly disturbing. Every day the children seem to disappear into the hidden rooms of the estate, and perhaps, into the hidden corners of Morgans mind.
The Childrens Home is a genre-defying, utterly bewitching masterwork, an inversion of modern fairy tales like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Golden Compass, in which children visit faraway lands to accomplish elusive tasks. Lambert writes from the perspective of the visited, weaving elements of psychological suspense, Jamesian stream of consciousness, and neo-gothic horror, to reveal the inescapable effects of abandonment, isolation, and the grotesque—as well as the glimmers of goodness—buried deep within the soul.
Review
"Mesmerizing….The folkloric undertone and stylish prose, which is replete with gruesome and wondrous images, keep the reader turning the pages."
Publishers Weekly
Review
"This genre-bending debut is by turns dread-inducing and heartwarming, a masterful exploration of whether innocence can truly sprout from ignorance…a magical, mesmerizing tale about the courage it takes to confront the unknown."
Booklist, STARRED review
Review
"A thoroughly original entry into the tradition of ghost stories, eschewing convention….compulsively readable….A one of a kind literary horror story."
Kirkus Reviews, STARRED review
Review
"The Children's Home is a not-nice sort of fairy tale, where the magic doesn't sparkle prettily but boils and oozes, where the Prince has a face of tatters, where the children take grown-up revenge on their monsters. It's also, somehow, a searching, empathetic narrative about forgiveness." Owen King, author of DOUBLE FEATURE: A NOVEL
Review
"A beautiful and uncanny novel by a writer who never ceases to surprise." Jenny Offill, author of DEPT. OF SPECULATION
About the Author
Charles Lambert is the author of many novels, short stories, and the memoir, With a Zero at its Heart, which was named one of The Guardian’s Ten Best Books of the Year in 2014. In 2007, he won an O. Henry Award for his short story, “The Scent of Cinnamon.” He has been shortlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the Lichfield Prize, and the Willesden Short Story Prize. He was born in Lichfield, England, and currently lives near Rome, Italy.