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The Remains of the Day follows the journey of Stevens, a lifelong butler in the service of Lord Darlington, who has recently passed. His new employer, a modern American, encourages Stevens to take a holiday and so Stevens seeks to reconnect with Miss Kenton, a former friend and colleague.
If The Silent Companionslands on your night table, don’t plan on leaving your bed anytime soon. Immersive, meticulous, and reminiscent of the masters of gothic fiction—not only a compulsively readable ghost story, but a skillful, loving ode to the entire genre.”
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In the above passage, Melville describes a felt presence on waking from sleep. A range of unusual experiences occur in the no-man’s land between sleep and waking, usually including short bursts of speech or visions in the transition to sleep (hypnagogic hallucinations) or fragments from dreams on awakening (hypnopompic hallucinations) (Jones et al., 2009). Felt presences in particular are a common feature of sleep paralysis. This is a phenomenon that will occur to one third of the population at some point in their lives (Cheyne & Girard, 2007; see also tinyurl.com/jscf0809), in which the awakening from sleep is accompanied by muscle paralysis and breathing problems. During paralysis many people describe the intense feeling of someone or something being in the room, often with a distinct location, occasionally moving towards them, in some cases pushing down on the person’s chest, and provoking a strong sense of dread. Folk accounts of visits by demon-like nightmares, incubi and succubi are thought to derive from such sleep paralysis experiences (Adler, 2011). The book takes enough time to fully explore class divides and the dramas of the gentry while also being a successful gothic horror. The Court Dancer by Kyung-sook Shin Jones, S.R., Fernyhough, C. & Meads, D. (2009). In a dark time: Development, validation, and correlates of the Durham Hypnagogic and Hypnopompic Hallucinations Questionnaire. Personality and Individual Differences, 46(1), 30–34. The characters were well-developed – I appreciated every one of them and how they fit into this sinister tale. I enjoyed each timeline – every story carried an important piece of this mysterious puzzle. While I enjoyed the atmosphere and uniqueness of this story, I had a hard time suspending my disbelief a few times. I still have some lingering questions relating to how a couple events transpired. You may want to leave the light on once you put down this intensely spooky gothic chiller. . . . Irresistibly creepy.”
The Silent Companion proved perfectly why I love Gothic stories. Creepiness and uncertainty can become the most addictive poison when combined, and Laura Purcell did an excellent job. Her writing style reminded me a little bit of The Miniaturist; both books have a subtle and smooth beauty in them, which I immensely enjoy. Although this kind of experience is not necessarily a frequent part of how voice-hearers describe their experience, it is also not a one-off. Anecdotally voice-hearers will talk about their voices being present without speaking, taking up spatial positions even when silent, and in some cases ‘looking’ at the world alongside the voice-hearer. In the Hearing the Voice phenomenology survey published last year (Woods et al., 2015), 69 per cent of a sample of 153 voice-hearers described their voices as being characterful or having a distinct personality, while 66 per cent associated their voices with unusual bodily sensations or changes. And in some cases, descriptions of presence were explicitly made: While it might come from a place far removed from the upper-class world of Downton Abbey English, it’s very much one of the best modern books like Downton Abbey you’re likely to read. And her present; Elsie Bainbridge is left mute and has disfiguring scars all over her body. This was caused by a house fire that she apparently started, and she faces being hung for arson.A Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, The Silent Companions is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect—much like the companions themselves. The “ghosts” or “companions” that are supposed to be terrifying just weren’t all that scary to me, it’s all little things here and there with nothing that jumped out and grabbed me to where I had to re-read it or anything. I spent way too much time reading dialogue after dialogue that again, bored me. The ending was also lame and very predictable, considering I was hoping it would redeem this novel and blow my mind but it ultimately left me unsatisfied. Blanke, O., Arzy, S. & Landis, T. (2008). Illusory perceptions of the human body and self. In G. Goldenberg & B. Miller (Eds.) Handbook of clinical neurology (3rd series, Vol. 88, pp.429–458). Edinburgh: Elsevier.
The TPJ is a multimodal area that is both anatomically and functionally diverse, so clear overlaps between voice and presence experiences are yet to be established. Nevertheless, for such phenomenologically unusual experiences, any clues that may shed light on overlapping or similar cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms are important to consider. And feelings of presence arguably provide a wealth of such clues: understanding the Third Man provides a model for how one’s own body could create the feeling of another; explanations of sleep paralysis highlight the role of negative affect and threat in driving unusual experiences; while the presences that follow bereavement provide examples of how identity without form can persist over time. Taken together, accounts of presence show us the ‘others’ that we carry with us at all times, the silent companions whose visits can either guide or haunt; support or confuse, comfort or terrify. The Silent Companions is Laura Purcell’s masterpiece and the original reason I fell in love with Gothic horror. I consider it to be the perfect entry point for readers new to the genre and wanting to give it a try. A genuinely suspenseful and really quite chilling tale set in an old crumbling Country estate, newly married and newly widowed Elsie is sent to see out her pregnancy at her late husband's crumbling country estate, The Bridge. Did you scare yourself at all when you were writing the book? (You certainly scared your editor when she was editing it!)
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What drove Elsie to start the fire? Did she even start it? What happened to Elsie Bainbridge to end up this way? Did she lose grip on her sanity or did these silent, wooden, companions cause harm? There, we are granted a voyeuristic peek into gentrified Paris through Yi Jin’s eyes. And we are given a thoughtful story that explores the West’s perception and treatment of Eastern ‘treasures’. A political and thrilling story of love, loyalty, and belonging. All of this leads up to a perfectly crafted climax, until the final word of The Silent Companions drops like a bomb on everything you thought you knew.
The Silent Companions had the same effect on me as The Bird Eater did. It makes you glance nervously over your shoulder to make sure you’re not being followed. If you wake up at night, your eyes automatically sweep the darkened room, searching for what may be hiding in the corners. And, given that pieces of wood are what’s raising hell in this haunted house, you find yourself wondering if that creak in the floorboard is just your house settling…or, if it’s something else you really don’t want to turn around and see. Laura Purcell does a good job setting up all the spooky elements for this story. We loved the spooky house, intriguing journals from the past, the hidden secrets and the creepy Silent Companions that had us shuttering with their creepiness. Sheldrake, R. (2005). The sense of being stared at – Part 1: Is it real or illusory? Journal of Consciousness Studies, 12(6), 10–31.A creepy, unsettlingtale that I had to finish reading in broad daylight― Stylist, 'Must-Read Books' The Silent Companions continues along the three timelines of Anne and Hetta in the 1600s, Elsie and Sarah at the Bridge in 1865, and Elsie at the asylum. The Silent Companions is brilliantly crafted for maximum suspense as Elsie tries to understand what happened to herself and to her deceased husband, and to uncover the source of evil infecting his estate. But to understand these mysteries, Elsie must also come to terms with her own haunted past.
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