Book Review – The Ghosts of Kerfol

Author:  Deborah Noyes
Publisher:  Candlewick Press
Binding:  Hardcover
Cover Image:  Jutta Klee/Corbis
Publication Date:  August 2008

In her short ghost story, Kerfol (1916), Edith Wharton details a first person account of the narrator’s experience on a haunted estate in France, which ends with the narrator’s strange and naive envy of one of the original parties devastated by the events that call forth an eerie pack of dogs intent on reminding the countryside of past horrors.  Noyes begins her homage to Wharton and Kerfol with a twist on the original tale; in “Hunger Moon” the young maid in waiting to the noble lady destroyed by love and jealousy tells the tale of her mistress’ downfall as she watches helplessly.  By the end of her tragic remembrance, she wants nothing more than to “fade and be forgotten.  Only this house, only Kerfol, which I once imagined so neglectful, will remember.”

Nearly two hundred years later, in “These Heads Would Speak,” a spoiled aristocrat and his mother, fortunate to have been spared during the Terror, stay briefly at Kerfol while waiting for an inheritance that will restore their fortune.  Victor, an aspiring artist, is called by disturbing thoughts to disfigure a portrait of the former mistress of the estate, but not before he is involved in an inexplicable confrontation with a pack of spectral dogs.  His mother finds him half-mad, bathed in red paint, and admonishes him for his immaturity, oblivious to the supernatural events that have left him stunned.

“The Figure Under the Sheet” is not the lover young American heiress Susanna expects, but a beast who brings her complicated romantic troubles to a swift and brutal end.  As she entertains guests on the French estate in 1926, Susanna wrestles with love and duty, bored and dismayed with the hollow lifestyle her father’s money encourages.  The same painting that once called for destruction in Victor’s hands reflects Susanna’s face, and her own neck bears the sapphire and diamond choker once gifted to the painted mistress by her jealous husband, the maker of all that haunts Kerfol.

Less than sixty years after Susanna faces the horrors hidden in the idyllic French countryside, Kerfol ignites the latent strife between teenage lovers on the verge of college and adulthood in “When I Love You Best.”  Young love strained by jealousy and suspicion seems to attract the unearthly dogs who bark and howl in the night while the couple sleeps, intruders on the estate which is operated as a museum, an oddity with the appeal of a murderous, mysterious history.  Meg and Nick escape a fiery death, but their relationship may be singed beyond repair after a night of revelation and terror.

The collection closes in 2006 with “The Red of Berries,” when Gavin boards on the estate while working with and for his father to restore the grounds for the historical society.  He is unafraid of the ghost stories that surround the property, contributing his fearlessness to the deafness that immerses him in silence.  His constant companion, his dog Clio, begins to behave strangely, as if she was playing with other dogs, when there are none visible.  He recalls a mysterious girl he saw that same morning, a girl dressed as an old fashioned maid, a girl he immediately knew was not real.  He does not doubt that Kerfol is haunted, but when his heightened senses fill with evidence, he realizes that “this place is crawling.”  A clammy ghost clings briefly to him on the stairs; a woman’s scream pierces the silence in his mind; and unseen dogs bark fiercely in a realm close by but not within his own.  He interacts briefly with the sad and beautiful girl from that morning, who reappears out of the woods, but he can’t possibly know that she was the maid to the mistress of Kerfol centuries before, or that the sapphire and diamond choker his dog digs out of the gardens may be the key to setting the spirits to rest.

These five stories are well-crafted portraits of relationships tested by jealousy and deceit, with attention to the details of the estate that make the fictional home loom large over the terrifying activities within it.  Emotions run high when stressed by fear, and innocent lives are lost in the midst of the fury that binds Kerfol to a thirst for revenge Noyes makes all too real.  While marketed as a young adult title, The Ghosts of Kerfol will appeal to adult readers who will appreciate the honest and careful treatment of love gone awry in a deceptively beautiful world.

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I am a librarian and a doctoral student in American Literature. I like cats, chinchillas, and moogles. When I go to a big city, I have to go to Chinatown. I eat lemons. I love love love NASCAR. This may be all you need to know. Medora's Blog