Book Review: THE SILK HOUSE by Kayte Nunn

Title: THE SILK HOUSE

Author: Kayte Nunn
Publisher: Hachette Australia
Read: April 2020

Expected publication: 30 June 2020

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟1/2

Book Description:

Weaving. Healing. Haunting. The spellbinding story of a mysterious boarding school sheltering a centuries-old secret by the bestselling author of THE BOTANIST'S DAUGHTER.

Australian history teacher Thea Rust arrives at an exclusive boarding school in the British countryside only to find that she is to look after the first intake of girls in its 150-year history. She is to stay with them in Silk House, a building with a long and troubled past, where the shadows hide more mysteries than she could ever imagine.

In the late 1700s, Rowan Caswell leaves her village to work in the home of an English silk merchant. She is thrust into a new and dangerous world where her talent for herbs and healing soon attracts attention.

In London, Mary-Louise Stephenson lives amid the clatter of the weaving trade and dreams of becoming a silk designer, a job that is the domain of men. Arriving in the market town of Oxleigh, she brings with her a length of fabric woven with a pattern of deadly plants that will have far-reaching consequences for all who dwell in the silk house.

What attracted me to this book:

A mysterious old boarding school. Women that harbour knowledge that is as much feared as it is revered. A centuries-old secret that is about to be revealed.

Don’t you just love mysteries that feature old mansions with a dark past?  Especially those creepy ones where things go bump in the night and one can never be sure if there is a rational explanation or it’s due to ghostly activity. I am happy to report that Silk House made for a perfect setting! With two timelines slowly exploring a past mystery going all the way back to the 1700s, I knew I was in for a treat.

My Musings:

When Australian English teacher Thea Rust arrives to take on a teaching position in an exclusive boarding school in the English countryside, she is not prepared for the dark secrets the old house is harbouring. As the reader, I had a definite advantage over Thea by being fully prepared and ready for the skeletons to come out of the closet, and I was ready for the ride!

It can’t be an easy task for any writer to weave together two separate timelines and several characters from varying backgrounds into a story that flows smoothly and keeps the reader’s interest equally through all POVs, but Nunn totally pulled this off for me. Thea, with her antipodean expectations of equality and fairness is not prepared for the misogyny and favouritism she encounters from the heads of the exclusive boarding school, who have been forced to allow girls to attend for the first time in the school’s history. I thought Thea to be a well-rounded and relatable character, her innocence (or naiveté) from growing up in a very different cultural environment obvious from the moment she first set foot onto British soil. She soon finds that Silk House, her new home, also offers something uniquely British –ghostly activity related to a 1700’s injustice that had been committed in these very walls.

The timeline set during the 1700’s opened up a fascinating chapter in English history I knew nothing about, the silk industry in the east of England in the early eighteenth century. Featuring floral patterns based on real botanical specimens, these fabrics set themselves apart from the French fashion at the time. As in Nunn’s book, history books show that a few women were among the designers, a trade dominated by males. Two of Nunn’s characters bring all aspects of this interesting chapter in British history to life: Rowan, who is maidservant to a wealthy silk merchant and a herbalist and healer in her own right; and Mary-Louise, an impoverished gentlewoman who follows her dream of becoming a fabric designer and incorporates images of real plants from the area into her elaborate designs.  

Strong feminist themes, including the women’s wisdom and knowledge of healing and herbalism still feared and denounced as witchcraft among the country folk in the early 18^th century, made for interesting reading and a degree of foreboding and tension as our characters me their fate. I really enjoyed the spooky element of Silk House and thought that it had even more potential to be creepy, but with such a lot of elements to the story, it never quite played centre stage. My only disappointment was that the ending felt rushed and abrupt, and the very clever and unexpected twist towards the finale got a bit lost in the tying up of the many plot points. Some of the characters’ interactions towards the end also suffered from the rush to bring the story to a conclusion, which made it not as satisfying for me as I had hoped.

Summary:

All in all, THE SILK HOUSE was a multi-layered gothic mystery, tying a centuries old secret to the present, which manifests itself in the spooky happenings of Silk House, the perfect setting for such a story. With the rich historical context of the British silk trade in the early to mid eighteenth century, the book made both for entertaining as well as fascinating reading and I feel like I learned something about a chapter in history I knew very little about. Readers who like strong female leads and feminist themes will appreciate the rich cast of characters here who are each fearless in their pursuit of their dreams and destinies. 

Thank you to Netgalley and Hachette Australia for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.