Book Review: Tillinghast by Clare Cavenagh

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“Nothing is clean, all is putrefying, everyone, from the newborn babe to the man who breathes his last, all the flowers, all the animals. Now we know that the world itself decays, the sun burns out. There is no permanence, there is no health. All dissolves.”

📚

It’s 2017, and Reverend Stutley Tillinghast lives as a recluse, seemingly acting as the pastor of an isolated, inactive Rhode Island parish. Aside from the numerous corpses buried in his cellar — periodic casualties of his insatiable bloodthirst — he’s avoided human contact for decades. Having lived longer than any person should, he’s haunted by the only one of his kind he has ever encountered: Lena Browne, who may have turned him into a monster, and for whom he still yearns. His lonely existence is disrupted after a woman named Sarah arrives bearing his last name and a remarkable resemblance to Lena. Her presence invigorates him, awakening long-dormant memories and establishing an instant and profound connection that hinges on Sarah's condition: she’s ill with symptoms Tillinghast understands, and that only he can cure.

Opening with a riveting and horrific crime, Tillinghast is a tantalizing, slow-burn slice of literary gothic horror that immediately hooks the reader, shifting between timelines via Tillinghast’s confessional writings interspersed with Sarah’s fevered reflections, revealing each individual’s life story. The primary setting is supremely gothic: Tillinghast’s remote childhood home situated amid faded paths and encroaching woods; atmospheric, decaying, frozen in time, and filled with relics.

Initially, Tillinghast appears almost an emotionless automaton, hunger his sole mortal link. Longevity and seclusion coupled with grisly acts have desensitized him and made him long for oblivion. Simply put, he’s tired and disgusted with himself, and he’s had enough. Despite this, the narrative is richly imbued with feeling, emotion, and sensation: intense guilt and inner turmoil, along with smell and touch. As part of his ongoing penance, Tillinghast has established rites of meditation and remembrance: though he sees his victims’ bodies as objects post-death, he refuses to forget their humanity or his grotesque violations, a reality so mired in pain and self-loathing, the reader can’t help but root for him.

The novel is inspired by the real 19th-century New England vampire panic, when consumption (tuberculosis) was prevalent, with related local legends and incidents forming a fascinating backdrop. The stakes are literally life and death: Tillinghast is prepared to end it all, and Sarah could be the thing that stops him — or that finally drives him over the edge. Add to that existential angst and unwelcome meddlers, and past overlaps present, muddying the future and producing a creeping sense of inevitability and unease: a melancholic yet hopeful and moving chronicle of impulse and instinct, loss and gain, virtue and destruction, belonging and companionship, comfort and comprehension, doubt and uncertainty, question and confession. A macabre, sharp, and captivating account that never actually employs the word “vampire,” which only enhances its allure.

Thank you to Viking Books for providing a copy of this fantastic title. It’s a quietly reflective, deeply satisfying tale and a unique take on the creature feature topped with (in this reader’s opinion) one of the most superb covers of the year!

🖤Amanda

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