Review of Lacrimore—A Monstrous Mansion

“It feeds on the horrors we commit….” A malevolent, sentient house serves as the lively setting of Lacrimore, a debut Gothic novella by S. J. Costello. The book came out in 2020 and was a winner of the Independent Publishers Book Awards.

Sivre Sen has all the social standing of a medium within a society that has been preoccupied with death ever since a devastating plague epidemic swept the land. But Sivre has a secret: she’s never actually spoken to a spirit … until now. A vision of a reclusive scholar leads her to Lacrimore, an imposing mansion perched on the cliffs of an island deep in the middle of a lake. But when she arrives, Sivre finds the elderly Lalichai still alive, tended to by the taciturn Dr. Vandorus, who is supposed to be in exile for his ethically questionable experiments in pursuit of answers about the boundary between life and death. Though her services are not yet needed, Sivre decides to stay at Lacrimore and wait to discover why she has been called there. Each person at Lacrimore is seeking answers about their past or their future. But the house has an agenda of its own. 

Lacrimore is the epitome of a Gothic setting, and Costello’s prose shines in descriptions of its haunting atmosphere. Like many historic homes, Lacrimore is a hodge-podge of architecture from different eras, constantly adapting to serve different purposes. Large portions of the house are shut off and crumbling with disuse, while even the still-inhabited sections are falling into neglect. The halls hold the echoes of the house’s dark history: from ballrooms where the wealthy once played their power games amidst glittering dances, to libraries filled with books of science used for unscrupulous experiments and halls once crowded with the desperately ill, when the island was used to quarantine victims of the plague. Awareness of this dark history haunts Sivre as she explores the building’s maze-like passageways. The water surrounding the mansion adds to its isolation, as well as to its foreboding ambiance—especially in a world where reflective surfaces like still water are known for trapping the spirits of the deceased. The waters of the lake are tainted, and the fish that dwell there grow to monstrous size and with an air of wrongness to them. That corruption, as it soon becomes clear, pervades the island and everything on it.

From the very beginning of the book, Lacrimore is described as though it is alive, but these turns of phrase become more literal and less poetic as the story progresses. The mansion is haunted not just by an individual or even a multitude of ghosts, but rather by the spirit of the place itself—a malevolent genius loci that grew out of the greed and violence and pain that the island has witnessed over the centuries. And it yearns to feed on more of the same. The spirit of the place can twist the halls of the house, create delusions to lead its inhabitants astray, and even find its way inside the minds of those that leave themselves open to its temptations. I found a unique sort of terror in the idea of having to fight something that is both inside your own mind and controlling the space all around you, with the nearest hope of refuge miles away across the water….

If this sort of terrifyingly Gothic tale appeals to you, you can search out a copy of Lacrimore at your favorite local retailer or purchase one online and support The Gothic Library in the process using this Bookshop.org affiliate link. If you’ve read it, be sure to let me know your thoughts in the comments below!