INHERITING HER GHOSTS BY S.H. COOPER (BOOK REVIEW)

8/7/2021

Eudora reminds me, fondly, of queer heroine Jenny Bonnet in Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music: both characters are unapologetic in their purposeful rage against societal expectations, and they do not give into their fears, even when backed into corners.

Inheriting Her Ghosts by S.H. Cooper
(Book Review by Rebecca Rowland)

In S.H. Cooper’s Inheriting Her Ghosts, narrator Eudora Fellowes might have been thought of as a spinster, an unmarried woman pathetically well past her “prime,” but she is the first to correct that notion, clarifying from the beginning that she “never much cared for the male species. Or, more accurately, the human species as a whole. I was alone, and it suited me.” Victorian era heroine Eudora purposely chose a single life, sharing her days instead with two large dogs, and because of this, she confides she has been “made to live always as an outsider.” This element seems at first to be a throw-away detail, a nice seasoning Cooper tosses into the mixture to spice up her character, but it proves to be an important trait in the resolution of the story.

Eudora inherits a distant relative’s creepy estate; High Hearth, as it is called, has sat abandoned since Eudora’s aunt’s passing. Even the help departed from their service, so Eudora moves into the dusty old mansion with nothing but her wardrobe and her canine companions. Her benefactor “was not a well-loved woman,” and the “rumours that surround [the] house, and [her late aunt] are dark ones.” Neighbors once accused the widow of dabbling in evil practices, evoking spirits and the like, and there were whispers around town that the elderly woman was “a witch, a murderess, or both.” Instead of retreating to a fainting couch when she learns of this history, Eudora laughs off the superstitions and digs her heels in further, insisting on remaining in the house alone. What follows is a series of progressively unsettling chapters, including ones where Eudora roams the manor wielding a cleaver, she discovers her mangled belongings tossed about her dressing chamber by an unseen force, and an invisible being climbs into bed alongside her. All of the makings for a haunted house surface like a macabre game of whack-a-mole: mysteriously locked doors, phantom smells and shrieks, ominous floorboard creaks, and dank rooms lit solely by a single candle. And this is only in the first half of the narrative.

Cooper, to her credit, creates a protagonist that smashes gender stereotypes deliciously. Eudora reminds me, fondly, of queer heroine Jenny Bonnet in Emma Donoghue’s Frog Music: both characters are unapologetic in their purposeful rage against societal expectations, and they do not give into their fears, even when backed into corners. That being said, Eudora acts with as much foolish hubris as any male main character in a Gothic horror story. Even as the town vicar flees the house in fright, the heroine resolves to stay put and investigate the origins of the mysterious hauntings. “A woman’s choice is a questionable thing indeed when it does not lead to marriage and procreation,” confides Eudora, but by the latter half of Inheriting, readers will be clutching tightly onto Eudora’s arm as she intrepidly faces the ghoulish spirits of High Hearth, and no one will miss the testosterone. Fans of Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black, your next late night chiller has arrived.

Inheriting Her Ghosts by S.H. Cooper

Inheritance often comes with strings attached, but rarely are they as tangled as those hanging over High Hearth.

When Eudora Fellowes learns she's the sole heir of her estranged great-aunt's seaside manor, she believes it will be the peaceful escape she's longed for. What awaits, however, is a dark legacy shrouded in half a century of secrets, and it doesn't take long before Eudora realizes she's not the only one to call High Hearth home.