2024/137: The House at the Edge of the World — Julia Rochester

We were conjoined at some point of the soul. It was a terrible epiphany. Combined, we made a monster. Somewhere I had read that in a case of conjoined twins one tends to be stronger, sapping the other’s blood and organs. I wondered which of us was the parasite. [loc. 2401]

John Venton fell off a Cornish cliff on his way back from the pub one night. After his death, his twin children -- Morwenna and Corwin^* -- go their separate ways: Morwenna eventually to London to bind books, and Corwin to volunteer in far-flung corners of the world. But seventeen years later, their grandfather Matthew's illness brings Morwenna back to Thornton, the family house.

Matthew, whose ambition to leave this corner of Cornwall was foiled by ill health, has devoted much of his life to painting a huge and intricate map of the area around the house, a circle with a radius of twelve miles, which is as far as he could walk in one day and still be home by evening. The map is full of iconic representations of Matthew's life and its events: a seagull's nest with one egg, a viper in a heap of leaves, a farting devil. And it hides (of course) a secret.

The focus of the novel is the relationship between Morwenna, the narrator, and her twin brother. Morwenna is thoroughly unlikeable, but honest and self-aware. Corwin is superficially lovely, but perhaps rather hollow. Their close bond excludes and alienates their parents, as well as Morwenna's boyfriend and the shared friends of their teenage years. (There is a splendidly catastrophic scene at a wedding when Morwenna and their mother argue.) Morwenna knows if it's Corwin calling as soon as the phone rings. And she has a plan to bring him back to Thornton.

This was a beautifully written novel that, with hindsight, was also quite depressing. It's hard to warm to Morwenna, and her mother is pitiable and unpleasant. I didn't get much sense of Corwin, perhaps because Morwenna thinks of him as an extension of herself. The only truly likeable character was Matthew. And the secret at the heart of this novel, which could have blossomed into something positive, became poisonous. Fascinating emotional interactions, and powerful evocations of the Cornish coast and countryside: but, like Corwin, something hollow at the centre.

Splendid and positive review by the much-lamented Diana Athill.

I bought this in June 2017, and finally read it as part of my 'Down in the Cellar' self-challenge, which riffs on the metaphor of to-be-read pile as wine-cellar rather than to-do list.

^* I am unable to read the name 'Corwin' without being immersed in memories of Zelazny's 'Chronicles of Amber'. The twins were named by their mother, who always felt out of place at Thornton, 'overcompensating for not being local'.