Bitterhall by Helen McClory
Review by Gary Kaill
The Scottish writer Helen McClory has always laid the most careful foundations for her wild fancies: a narrative journeying both outlandish and connective, and a mode invariably made all the more impactful by its unsettling closeness to home. No matter how much she toys with setting or period, or how vigorously she warps our sense of reality, a deeply developed humanist touch prevails. It’s how she connects — McClory’s weird is inevitably sat implacably at the feet of your normal.
Here, in her second novel, the long-awaited follow-up to her bewitching 2018 collection Mayhem and Death, the line between what we (think we) know and what we would perhaps rather not, thins considerably. McClory remains an arch stylist, a curator of form. Each knew work seems to operate in opposition to its predecessor. Mayhem and Death came just a year after the remarkable Flesh of the Peach: an ersatz road trip novel that re-tooled a distinctly American form with verve and guile. You can imagine McClory turning her attentions to the dustiest forms and making them gleam: future shock dystopia; country house mystery; romance, even.
There are elements of the latter in Bitterhall, though it is the book’s form that catches the eye initially. Told Rashomon-style, from the viewpoint of its three protagonists, the book charts the intersecting lives of Orla, Daniel, and Tom. The urban setting is left entirely to the reader’s imagination, the better to apply focus to events, perhaps. (Hint: Poirot-level detecting skills not required.) A book comes into Daniel’s possession, apparently a nineteenth century journal written by a James Lennoxlove, the master of Bitterhall. The house and its owner begin to impact on the lives of those who read it, Tom, in particular, developing a dark fascination with events detailed within — not least a particularly gruesome New Year’s Eve murder witnessed by Lennoxlove.
The book becomes the catalyst for the events that come to bind the three. Daniel, intriguing and sketchy, begins the story. Do we trust this committed, seemingly straight-laced young man, hard at work on a project of 3D printing in a (again, unnamed) university basement? ‘You are loved, Daniel, I tell myself,’ he gently muses. We may not care for him, yet, but McClory clearly does. Do we follow her lead?
Orla’s introduction causes a re-set. Suddenly, everything you thought you knew is up for question? Are Orla and Tom the couple they seem to be? And what are we to make of Daniel’s increasing fascination with Tom? Bitterhall keeps its counsel well — it plays out its various mysteries (including a perfectly pitched eroticism) with a devilish glee. The final third of the book is narrated by Tom, and that’s where the fan will need wiping down. Take a pause and a dram — you’ll need it.
Bitterhall’s developing plot focuses, as past begins to inexplicably overlap with present, on the very notion of haunting — of the dead’s return into our lives and, perhaps, into our bodies. McClory — a self-proclaimed horror fan — conjures a series of set-pieces that, while leaving the that conundrum largely in the hands of the reader, still chill the blood. You picture them, instinctively, in widescreen. (Bitterhall is ripe for a filmmaker as attuned to character as they are to visual storytelling and expression. Is Lynne Ramsay available?)
Above all, there is a deep philosophy here. The mouthpiece of much of that concern is Orla, a thrilling creation on many levels, not least her instinct against type: excited, rather than cowed by, the supernatural prospect of events. ‘I think a part of me was lit up wanting this to be the moment when I saw a possession come on before me.’
Up against considerable competition, Orla might well be McClory’s finest creation. At a party (a masterfully told section of the book, that deftly pivots the plot) she is a drunken delight: ‘I asked nobody if they’d ever seen a ghost, or if they felt slightly aroused at the idea of demonic possession, or the fairies stealing their beloveds. I went to the punchbowl. Hours passed. I went to the punchbowl, but I was strong. I chattered indomitably. I frightened an old lady by pointing finger guns at her. That was when I went to the toilet and had a long piss.’ When Tom suggests they go to a superhero film (you can guess which soggy ‘universe’ it inhabits), she observes of an explosive battle: ‘The scene was a humanitarian disaster, but what was really awful was that one superhero didn’t trust another one and was rude.’ Quite.
Told in McClory’s rangy, poetic prose, Bitterhall just works. Beautifully. This is no narrative Cerberus — McClory has everything under control. In fact, by the time you find yourself reviewing previous events, scouting out their earlier appearances for clues or hints, not lost but dizzied, the sense of adventure is overwhelming. All of this is done with not just brio but a winning sense of irony: punch the air as you note that a key chapter, written from Daniel’s point of view and re-told later by Orla, is titled ‘Thematic Continuity.’
If the craft of pure storytelling is important to you, then McClory’s skill with the logistics of plot design — allied to an instinctive understanding of the accumulating domino effect of characters’ actions — is worthy of note. Bitterhall is densely plotted, properly event-driven. (How much narrative certainty it contains becomes fully apparent only when finished.) Watch how its three protagonists elevate themselves to dramatis personae: watchful, active.
That Bitterhall is a novel of ideas is not in the least bit surprising but McClory presents her curiosity and her worldview with care and great consideration. She’s a sleeve tugger not a megaphone-wielder. And, so, Bitterhall’s thematic internet operates as dialogue rather than polemic. The book has much to say on (you got a pen?): identity; nature and landscape, and their influence on our sense of purpose; consumerism (Tom: ‘Fucking vaping, the flavoured condom method of substance dependency’); relationships; nostalgia — our connection to our past and how we shape and re-shape that connection to understand our present; our sense of reality — the value of original versus fake; the self and our ceaseless quest for self-determination.
McClory subjects the latter to staunch inquiry. Even as Daniel, Orla, and Tom head towards the place and the event that brings Bitterhall to its beautifully enacted conclusion, they are barely sure that their actions are even their own, or merely echoes of the past — a ripple effect set in motion several lifetimes ago. They stumble, then race, towards a place in their own shared history. All three combine to forge a reckoning that is wondrous, epic, true. It is a jolt to have to leave these three characters behind. Bitterhall, in part due to how it so tenderly examines these broken lives, is a deeply moving novel.
Weighty, uncontainable, bursting with its own fascination with the world — such an undertaking, such an achievement. Bitterhall demands that you engage with it on its own formidable terms. It is, by some distance, McClory’s most ambitious and affecting work to date — a neo-gothic yarn possessed of a rich and abiding humanity. As the mercurial Orla observes, when reflecting on the questionable morality of the simple act of making a copy of a historical manuscript, the intrinsic value of the facsimile: ‘We have to be careful, yes, but the book tells us in the handling what it can take.’ No question of that. You could toss Bitterhall into the heart of an active volcano and it would emerge defiant and intact, brushing ash from its pages, daring you to do it again.
Bitterhall is published by Polygon Books, 1st April 2021