View source for Touched by Joanna Briscoe

{{infobox
|title=Touched
|author=Joanna Briscoe
|reviewer=Susmita Chatto
|genre=General Fiction
|rating=3
|buy=Maybe
|borrow=Maybe
|isbn=978-0099590828
|pages=244
|publisher=Hammer
|date=July 2014
|amazonuk=<amazonuk>0099590824</amazonuk>
|amazonus=<amazonus>0099590824</amazonus>
|website=http://www.joannabriscoe.com/
|video=
|summary=A family move to a new home, which oozes damp, smells and noise. Then one by one, their daughters go missing....
}}
Rowena Crale and her family have moved to a new home, having uprooted an ill and unwilling mother in law to take possession of it. There are five children in the family...but six if you count young Eva’s imaginary friend. Eva is the family outcast; dressed in her grandmother’s clothes and preparing to attend a different school to her siblings, she is often away from her family, who seem to care little for her or her whereabouts.

The book has a compelling start, with the house depicted as a tortured animal whose feelings and reactions are completely ignored by the new owners and the builders battling to modernise it. I love it when houses – or other inanimate objects – come to life and become key characters and I thought Briscoe did a terrific job of conveying the pain of the house to the reader. Briscoe builds suspense brilliantly and at times I half expected the house to simply gobble up the inhabitants!

But as the book progresses, it becomes heavily involved with more mundane matters. There were still incidents going on with the house but they were buried in a lot of minutiae.  Briscoe may have felt she was underlining the 'bored housewife' problem with all this detail but it didn't make for interesting reading. At first, I thought perhaps something relevant must be contained in those descriptions and paid careful attention, but began drifting off and wondering when something more was going to happen.

The focus on domestic detail had the effect of burying the more interesting incidents when they occurred. They also negated what had little sympathy for I had for Rowena or what happened to her on a personal level. She was so rarely described in any other terms, it was hard to care about her. A woman who questions her life and asks how she ended up with five children is a character I find very hard to take an interest in. Characters who have not made active decisions but floated along passively through their lives irritate me; that’s very personal though and it may not affect the enjoyment of the book for someone who doesn't have that particular pet hate.

With regards to the other characters, I’m not someone who thinks characters have to be likeable to be interesting, but they do need to be explored fully in order to make an impression. This is a novella of course, but the domestic matters could have been replaced by more character development or even just information.  I was fascinated by Eva and took to kindly Mr Pollard, much as she herself did.  Otherwise, I felt Briscoe had put her economical writing skills to use in the wrong way, skimming over characters and fully describing the details of domestic routines. 

The structure of this review is starting to mirror the structure of the book; an enthusiastic start, then a long lull of uncertainty. It was relatively late in the book that I began to perk up again, as more sinister events occurred and we approached an explanation.

Oddly enough, I used to live in a property that had something wrong with it wherever I looked. It wasn’t haunted – not that I know of anyway – but the intimidation of an old pile rotting around you is something I’m depressingly familiar with. However, even that experience didn’t help me to feel enough for the characters. When all was revealed, it felt like a very ordinary explanation, when the initial set up had pointed to something extraordinary happening – hence I was disappointed. 

I would advise reading this book with the knowledge that it’s more of a mellow meander through something vaguely sinister than a story that will have you scared to turn the light off at night.  I think it’s a book that will suit those who enjoy tales of families and everyday life, but may not be one for someone who enjoys a more classic spooky tale.

If the idea of this book appeals then you might also enjoy [[Tales from the Dead of Night: Thirteen Classic Ghost Stories by Cecily Gayford (editor)]]

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