My Two Cents (Book Review): VEIL by Jeff Clulow

I love gothic horror, with its beleaguered heroines facing sinister and oppressive forces, brooding atmospheres and gloomy, often decrepit settings. These settings, in fact, are often characters in and of themselves, filled with cobwebs, shadows, and secrets galore. The mansion that's central to the story in Jeff Clulow's "Veil" is no exception, and just as the derelict halls of Aeolus House draw the protagonist, Suze Newman deeper into the mystery that is her family's storied past, so too does it pull the reader in, page by eagerly turned page.

Suze is an orphan, raised since birth in England's foster system . She has always felt disconnected from other people, despite her best efforts to fit in and bond with friends or foster families. She keeps her emotions bottled up inside, or rather, locked away in a metaphorical suitcase inside her mind, and ekes out an isolated, unfulfilled, and meager existence. When the story opens, she's hit rock bottom, having lost her job, which will inevitably mean losing the crummy little apartment that's more of a place where she keeps her few belongings than any real "home." Thus, when she receives notification that she is the sole beneficiary of a large estate belonging to the late Emma Lacey, her luck at last seems to be changing.

Suze learns that Emma was her birth mother, and when she travels to the rural English coast, finds a sprawling mansion called Aeolus House waiting. The home is named after a Greek wind god, and the name is more than fitting: from its lofty perch atop a rocky cliff overlooking the sea, the house is continuously battered by gales. From the looks of things inside the house, Suze discovers it hasn't fared much better. Emma, as it turns out, was a bit of a nut, as well as a hoarder, and the house she left behind is filled with heaps of old papers, books, newspapers, and trash. Among these, Suze finds a couple of curious items: a tattered old wedding dress and matching veil, and a box that once held a pair of antique dueling pistols, with one of the guns missing. All will become key elements as the story unfolds.

When Suze tries the wedding veil on, she's shocked to see the ghostly figure of a young man standing at the bottom of a stairwell. She pulls the veil away, and the apparition is gone. Each time she wears the veil, she sees visions throughout Aeolus House that she soon realizes are memories -- her mother, Emma's memories, to be exact. When one of these evokes feelings of overwhelming terror and dread, Suze realizes that something horrible happened to Emma once upon a time.

Through a series of twists and turns as treacherous as the foot paths from Aeolus House to the beaches below the cliffs, Clulow leads readers through the dark and disturbing mystery as Suze uncovers her family's past.

His writing style is lush, descriptive, and beautiful, and through his deft narrative, Aeolus House comes to life in minute detail. Like in all good gothic tales, it's much more than a setting, and for Suze, it serves as both an anchor to her roots -- a place she can finally call home -- and an albatross, weighing her down with the horrors her mother once endured.

Clulow's character development is likewise well-done. Suze is a relatable, likeable character, one who is easy to root for and empathize with. Again, like in all good gothic horror, there's a hint of romance when she's introduced to a handsome young solicitor charged with helping her inventory the estate to sell in probate, but Suze is no damsel in distress, nor does she need anyone to rescue her. In her, Clulow has created a gothic heroine with a modern mindset: strong-willed, fiercely independent, and more than capable to taking care of business for herself.

Clulow is a new writer to me, but one I'll seek out again. "Veil" is both haunting and harrowing, an exploration of a family's horrific past, and a young woman's triumph in overcoming it.

You can read the first two chapters and find pre-order/purchase links here: www.jeffclulow.com/books