Book Review: MIRRORLAND by Carole Johnstone

 

Title: MIRRORLAND

Author:  Carole Johnstone

Publisher:  Scribner

Read: May 2021

Expected publication: out now

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟

 

Book Description:

 

Cat lives in Los Angeles, far away from 36 Westeryk Road, the imposing gothic house in Edinburgh where she and her estranged twin sister, El, grew up. As girls, they invented Mirrorland, a dark, imaginary place under the pantry stairs full of pirates, witches, and clowns. These days Cat rarely thinks about their childhood home, or the fact that El now lives there with her husband Ross.

But when El mysteriously disappears after going out on her sailboat, Cat is forced to return to 36 Westeryk Road, which has scarcely changed in twenty years. The grand old house is still full of shadowy corners, and at every turn Cat finds herself stumbling on long-held secrets and terrifying ghosts from the past. Because someone—El?—has left Cat clues in almost every room: a treasure hunt that leads right back to Mirrorland, where she knows the truth lies crouched and waiting...

A twisty, dark, and brilliantly crafted thriller about love and betrayal, redemption and revenge, Mirrorland is a propulsive, page-turning debut about the power of imagination and the price of freedom.

 

My musings:

 

Johnstone nails the portrayal of a childhood damaged by trauma and its aftermath in her twisty, dark new thriller MIRRORLAND, where nothing is quite as it seems. How do children cope with trauma? By removing themselves from it and escaping into fantasy. Which makes their memories unreliable at best. As Cat returns to her old childhood home after her twin sister El’s disappearance, she is instantly transported back into memories of their imaginary “Mirrorland”, a dark alley next to their house they played in as children. But Mirrorland was more than just play – it was a safe place, an escape from the evil witch who would come and visit, and from their grandfather’s rages. Could Mirrorland hold the clues to El’s fate?

 

MIRRORLAND is a dark tale in which reality and fantasy blend, and it is up to the reader to look between the lines and find out the truth. When the sisters fled the house 20 years ago, there had been tragedy and murder, but all those details are hazy in Cat’s mind. Entering the house again after all these years brings all her demons crashing back, but they are disguised in the shape of her Mirrorland characters, the place that helped the sisters survive the horrors their childhood held in store for them.

 

At times, MIRRORLAND was a confusing read as Cat’s childhood fantasies mingle with reality. There is the clown cafe, and the pirate ship, and fantastical characters like Mouse, the evil witch, the tooth fairy, clowns, pirates and Indians, who are more real to the small girl Cat than her unhappy mother and volatile grandfather. As the reader, we are thrown headlong into Cat’s fantasies as if they were real memories, as if there really was a pirate ship anchored in the alley next to the house. It’s not until later, when the curtains slowly lift and Cat is forced to peek at the truths hiding behind the lies that the girls’ terrible trauma is revealed.

 

I admit that I struggled initially with the many magical realism elements of the story until the sinister tale sucked me in, nightmare-like, into a story so dark and horrible that it took me a while to shake it off. MIRRORLAND is a cleverly constructed, multi-layered tale that will stump even the best armchair detective. See through Cat’s eyes, her childhood trauma has been hidden under so many layers that the final truth is terrible to behold and Cat’s own life is again in danger.

 

MIRRORLAND will appeal to readers who are looking for a unique thriller that stands out from the rest through incorporation of unreliable childhood memories into its tale. Johnstone shows a keen insight into the effects of trauma on children and how they learn to cope with their distorted realities. It wasn’t until afterwards that I appreciated the true art of storytelling in this dark tale, and it gave me chills long afterwards. A wonderful debut from a talented writer!