BOOK REVIEW: SUNDIAL CATRIONA WARD
2/5/2022
 The desert knows how to keep a secret… Catriona Ward, author of last year’s standout novel, ‘The Last House on Needless Street’ returns to the shelves with ‘Sundial’, another jaunt into grim and twisty Horror fiction. Trapped in an abusive marriage and fearful for her daughter’s mental health, Rob resolves to take Callie, the twelve-year-old in question, back to her childhood home for a reckoning. The old house, the eponymous Sundial, stands deep in the Mojave Desert, a former hangout for anti-establishment scientists and burnt out hippies, the building and the labs abandoned for years. Haunted by the wind as much as by secrets, Rob begins to unravel her past in an attempt to save her daughter from a hereditary darkness – a past that involves controversial animal experiments, a power struggle and an explosively violent tragedy. Can Rob save Callie from a similar fate before it’s too late? If blood runs thicker than water, will it again stain the floorboards and history of Sundial? ‘Sundial’ is a novel that’s best approached blind and one that will leave readers with chilling food for thought. With deft prose and stark imagery, Ward unfolds a family drama of monstrous proportions. Related in parallel narrative by mother and daughter, it’s the depth and complexity between the characters that makes the novel shine, most notably in the siblings-turned-rivals played out by Rob and her unruly teenage sister Jack. This absorbing backstory forms the spine of the novel and provides a few touching and resonant moments. The sentimentality soon gives way to rising tension and an oppressive atmosphere, however. Ultimately, readers may struggle to find any character herein admirable – a small caveat as this is a searingly angry yarn and far from reconciliatory. At its gruesome, sun-baked heart, ‘Sundial’ is Horror with a capital H. The pages fly by with aching pathos and recognisable altercation; Ward portrays adolescent rebellion to perfection, and one or two scenes elevate the nastiness with echoes of memory and loss. Framed by a setting as vast as the desert, the isolation feels claustrophobic and Ward does an excellent job of boxing her theatre in with dangers out in the sands – both the horrors of the past and the beasts that lurk hungry in the waste. Parts of the novel are brutal indeed (latter scenes reminiscent of Stephen King’s ‘Cujo’) but it’s the conflicts at play that amount to a tightly plotted thriller that will keep readers guessing as much as emotionally fraught. The novel leads you breathless through a series of confrontations and scales to an eventual, shattering truth. Packed with surprises and the lightest thread of the supernatural, ‘Sundial’ plunges headfirst into a psychological Horror par excellence where all the monsters wear a human face and the stakes go beyond the grave. Easily up there with Ward’s previous outing into the dark, ‘Sundial’ is another class act from a writer at the very top of her game. Sundial: |
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