Subject: Review: Burnside's _The Dumb House_

From: [email-masked] (Paul S Jenkins)
Date: 1 Oct 1998 22:20:03 GMT

_The Dumb House_ by John Burnside
	Review Copyright (c) 1998 Paul S. Jenkins

Madness is manifest in many forms. The true horror in this debut novel
lies not in the main character's actions -- despicable, diabolical and in
many cases viscerally unpleasant though they are -- but in his
oh-so-reasonable logic, as he explains his motives along the way.

The first-person narrator is plainly mentally disturbed -- a result, most
likely, of his unconventional upbringing. But he portrays himself as a
model of calm, clear-headed sanity.

He tells his story -- or rather, the story of one episode in what will
surely be a series of horrendous, callous experiments -- in interwoven
flashbacks. The very first sentence tells us that he's killed, and the
rest of the novel expounds the circumstances, announcing each significant
scene's climax in advance, in a kind of flashback-leapfrog, but without
diminishing the tension; it's not the plot that's of most interest, but
the protagonist's state of mind.

So much of this novel is a delight. The closely observed details, the
intricate lucidity of the writing, the temporal juggling -- all these help
to win the reader to the narrator's side. He is a sympathetic character,
for all his awful actions; every sentence proclaims his justification. A
careful experimenter with a laudable goal, he seeks to test a hypothesis:
that children reared in the absence of the spoken word will invent a
language of their own.

"In Persian Myth, it is said that Akbar the Great once built a palace
which he filled with new-born children, attended only by mutes, in order
to learn whether language is innate or acquired. This palace became known
as the Gang Mahal, or Dumb House."

The myth, quoted on the frontispiece, and related to him repeatedly in
childhood, is the seed of the protagonist's obsession. It's an obsession
nurtured during his insular upbringing. Throughout the novel he never
seems to meet normal people; all those he interacts with, starting with
his parents, are in some way peculiar. The detached, unfeeling experiment
he performs on the unfortunate twins in some way compensates for his own
emotional deprivation.

_The Dumb House_ is chilling psychological horror, set in urban
present-day, viewed from a cool and twisted perspective. Recommended.

%A   Burnside, John
%T   The Dumb House
%I   Random House Vintage
%C   London
%D   1998 (copyright 1997)
%G   ISBN 0 09 958271 6
%P   198 pp.
%O   paperback £5.99

Paul S. Jenkins | More reviews at:
Portsmouth   UK | http://www.cix.co.uk/~willowsoft/revup/