The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue

          In the spirit of full disclosure, I attended a Convent School.  Although not a Catholic I had the joy of being educated solely by nuns (with one exception of a lay teacher who was an ex-nun) for a full 7 years.  So, this almost had a flashback quality when talking about the strange atmosphere that pervades a school run by those married to Christ.  Especially when they are a traditional order with the wimples and long, sack-like habits and who wholly subscribe to the stain of Original Sin.  That would have been creepy enough but make the setting a girl's boarding school and the eery factor is off the scale.  Whether this is fully drawn on the page or embellished by distant memory I cannot truly attest but some of those school sections really gave me the heeby-jeebies.

Ostensibly this is the story of Louisa - bright scholarship girl who excels in her exams and gets thrust in to the rarefied atmosphere of an exclusive boarding school.  One question this left me with was - it felt like she was 16, I'm sure she was 16 and yet she enters in the fourth year.  Surely she would have been lower sixth?  Yet, frequently the novel mentions the Sixth Form areas which are clearly out of bounds to Louisa.  I just found the age thing confusing and I think it bothered me more than it should have.

What does work well is the timeline of the book.  Whilst, it is set in two disparate timezones - that preceeding Louisa's disappearance and then one that follows on some 20+ years later - each timeline runs in an horologically correct manner which pleased me as it stepped away from the current fashion to jumble everything up.  The story is strong enough on it's own to not need to needlessly confuse the reader.  In fact, it could have been split in to a couple of sections, before and after, if you will and would have still been an absorbing read.

The characters really do inhabit the page, well those from Louisa's past do; unfortunately the modern day is much less richly evoked and that is what let the book down.  There is a uncomfortable disconnect between then and now and it sometimes felt, to me anyway, that the sections were written by disparate people only one of whom could evoke people on a page to living and breathing entities.

I know plot hasn't really been discussed here but it is so richly detailed and multi-leveled that to say more than is included in the publisher's blurb would ruin the read.  Trust me, this is one book that deserves to be read and thought about and it did make me think!

As a debut novel this is exceptional, the problem for the author will be following it up when trying to craft against deadlines.  There was just something about the reading of this that felt like it had been carefully crafted and edited with the luxury of time on it's side.  I am very interested to see how the author will parlay that second difficult book when working against a strict publisher's deadline.

THIS IS AN HONEST AND UNBIASED REVIEW OF A FREE COPY OF THE BOOK RECEIVED VIA READERS FIRST.