The Uninvited

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I was so into this book that the least little disruption gave me fits. I really enjoyed this one and can't recommend it highly enough. If like me, you're into older supernatural works (this one is from 1942), then do not miss the novel. While it may seem tame in today's world, there is a LOT going on here and quite frankly, it's downright spooky. They find the owner, an elderly man with a granddaughter just out of boarding school. He seems reluctant to sell the house, and reluctant to explain why, but Roddy is persuasive. But the big take-away is that whether or not the Fournier manor was really haunted, you can see how our modern ghost stories are an allegory for true real estate nightmares. There is a real tragic horror behind a devastating end to the thrill and excitement of finally living the dream and owning your own home. There are very real practical and psychological issues that are involved when a home no longer feels like a home but an enemy. "The Uninvited" captures this horror perfectly, and I can say so from experience.

That meant that a degree of suspense was lost - I knew from the start that something had happened and I knew, from the tone, that the Fitzgerald's had been able to put whatever had happened behind them. The Uninvited is based on interviews with the Coombs family of western Wales, who were caught up in what has become known as the 1977 Welsh Triangle UFO Flap. Hundreds of UFO sightings were reported that year in Wales, but the Coombs' dairy farm was particularly affected, with family members seeing multiple large lights in the nighttime sky, and encountering large glowing figures described as "spacemen" in silver suits and helmets. They reported other unexplained phenomena, such as cows mysteriously vanishing and reappearing at other locations. I would like to add that Macardle's novel is a lot more than just a ghost story. She was an ardent Republican feminist who was appalled at the codification of the domestic role of women in the 1937 Irish Constitution. Therefore, it is no surprise that the main character Pamela breaks from these stereotypes. But most of all, the ghost story itself cleverly is about how a family that has literally deified a dead woman, who in life was idealized as a virtuous example of domestic martyrdom to a toxic marriage. I can't say more without spoilers, but I assure you Macardle's criticism is excellently expressed in the theme of this entertaining story without being preachy at all. During a housewarming party, a friend of Roddy and Pamela’s is profoundly disturbed by something she sees in the mirror of the spare bedroom. Roddy spends the next night in that spare bedroom, and finds himself overcome by fear and foreboding. And then, when Roddy and Pamela away from the house, Lizzie is terrified by something that she sees emerging from that room, something that she can not find the words to explain. I liked Roddy and Pamela; I found it easy to understand who they were, where they were in life. The sibling relationship was particularly well drawn; they were a team.Roddy and Pamela are full of ideas for refurbishing the house and making it into a home; and they dismiss local gossip that says that the house is haunted, and that terrified tenants had fled. They saw nothing amiss. They invite an old family retainer, Lizzie, to become their housekeeper; they enjoy the simple pleasures of life in the country; and they make plans to invite friends to stay. They know that something happened in that house. They suspect that it involves Stella, the granddaughter of the man who reluctantly sold them the house, because she is drawn to them and to that room. A romance grows between Roddy and Stella and that complicates the story; because the house had been Stella's childhood home, because the haunting of the house had its roots in a tragedy that happened then, and because whenever the Fitzgerald's saw the possibility of a resolution they also saw the possibility of harm to Stella. They had thought things through; they knew that their circumstances were likely to change, that they wouldn't always want to share a home, and they had made provision for that.

Macardle was a member of the Gaelic League and later joined Cumann na mBan in 1917. In 1918 (during the War of Independence), Macardle was arrested by the RIC while teaching at Alexandra; she was eventually dismissed in 1923, towards the latter end of the Irish Civil War, because of her anti-Treatyite sympathies and activities. When the republican movement split in 1921-22 over the Anglo-Irish Treaty, MacArdle sided with Éamon de Valera and the anti-Treaty Irregulars. She was imprisoned by the fledgling Free State government in 1922, during the Civil War, and served time in both Mountjoy and Kilmainham Gaols. I gently redirected Steff, assuring her she had not been fully awake and maybe was having a waking dream. But then several months later, we were sitting in the front parlor and, from up the same stairs, we both clearly heard a little girl call out, "Mommy?" There are several points to my story. First of all, it allowed me to give you a taste of what you can expect from "The Uninvited" without spoiling any plot. If you liked hearing about my own ghost, then this book is definitely for you. It is the template for grounded, slow-burn haunted house stories.

Customer reviews

A brother and sister, in an attempt to escape their pasts and the chaos of the city, buy a house in remote Devonshire. It turns out, however, that the house is already occupied by something beyond the human... Dorothy Macardle was born in Dundalk, Ireland in 1889 into a wealthy brewing family, famous for their Macardle's Ale, and was raised Roman Catholic. She received her secondary education in Alexandra College, Dublin – a school under the management of the Church of Ireland – and later attended University College, Dublin. Upon graduating, she returned to teach English at Alexandra.

But once the hauntings start going into full swing, then the novel becomes hard to put down. Pamela, like Steff, is the first to experience strange phenomena, and Roddy, like me, placates her at first, until things start getting out of hand that no one can ignore. They find the house of their dreams. It stood alone not far from the edge of a cliff, it was uninhabited and it appeared to have been neglected for quite some time, but they saw its potential. And they saw a “for sale” sign. I was uneasy because I was eavesdropping there. It was an intrusion; this house was old; long before we were born it had its occupants, living and dying here. We were aliens and trespassers in their hereditary home. Now I knew that they were in possession of the house once more, their timelessness closing over our intrusion as water over a stone."I had an idea of how the mystery would pay out at an early stage, but that didn't spoil the story. It was an utterly believable human tragedy, and I could understood how and why it had happened. And I was caught up with Roddy and Pamela as they struggled to work out what had happened and what they could, what they should, do.