A.C. Fayler's 'The Talking Castle' has been described as 'A very English children's story about death', and it undoubtedly is - drawing on the well-worn trope of a group of children going on some innocent holiday adventure, Fayler's book turns this scenario firmly on its head. What begins as a playful, childish foray into the English countryside, soon turns into the sublimely gothic: a tale of ghosts, of murder, and of war. Abstract characters emerge from the the blistered woodwork: mad kings, crippled birds, and imprisoned inventors, tormentors of the novel's mournful protagonist, Johnny.
Throughout its increasingly bleak adventure, the author maintains the same youthful language with which he begins - leaving behind a beguiling narrative, a book written as if for children but which descends into a near Lovecraftian horror. Set in an abandoned orphanage - its residents dead by fire - The Talking Castles invokes the Lord of the Flies as it explores the complex, and macabre society that its child protagonist's have wrung from the embers of their demise.
A.C. Fayler's 'The Talking Castle' has been described as 'A very English children's story about death', and it undoubtedly is - drawing on the well-worn trope of a group of children going on some innocent holiday adventure, Fayler's book turns this scenario firmly on its head. What begins as a playful, childish foray into the English countryside, soon turns into the sublimely gothic: a tale of ghosts, of murder, and of war. Abstract characters emerge from the the blistered woodwork: mad kings, crippled birds, and imprisoned inventors, tormentors of the novel's mournful protagonist, Johnny.
Throughout its increasingly bleak adventure, the author maintains the same youthful language with which he begins - leaving behind a beguiling narrative, a book written as if for children but which descends into a near Lovecraftian horror. Set in an abandoned orphanage - its residents dead by fire - The Talking Castles invokes the Lord of the Flies as it explores the complex, and macabre society that its child protagonist's have wrung from the embers of their demise.
