The Dumb House - John Burnside

Getting on for a year ago, theediscerning was doing his dooyoo duty and opping poetry books on the database that hadn't seen the light of any other reviewer's days. He dutifully read a poetry book by John Burnside, and found it to be piffle. It really didn't bode well for the same author's debut novel, The Dumb House, which he has finally got round to reading. And what a delight to find it is so much better, and can be really highly recommended. It's the first person narrative of a rather peculiar chap. It begins with an advanced warning of two dead twins. What is the story behind them, and our narrator? Out of 200 pages ...

"No one could say it was my choice to kill the twins, anymore than it was my decision to bring them into the world." And so starts what is one of the most disturbing, terrifying and utterly gripping books I have ever had the mis/fortune to pick up. The book is written entirely in first person, and from beginning to end you hang on every word of the central character. He is fascinated by language and human behaviour, and the effect that losing one has on the other. His fascination comes out of stories from Persian Myth where a great palace was built, in which new-born babies were attended only by mutes. This was run as a test ...