The Silent Companions
by Laura Purcell
When Elsie married handsome young heir Rupert Bainbridge, she believed she was destined for a life of luxury. But with her husband dead just weeks after their marriage, her new servants resentful, and the local villagers actively hostile, Elsie has only her husband’s awkward cousin for company. Or so she thinks. Inside her new home lies a locked door, beyond which is a painted wooden figure —a silent companion —-that bears a striking resemblance to Elsie herself. The residents of The Bridge are terrified of the figure, but Elsie tries to shrug this off as simple superstition–that is, until she notices the figure’s eyes following her.
A Victorian ghost story that evokes a most unsettling kind of fear, this is a tale that creeps its way through the consciousness in ways you least expect–much like the silent companions themselves.
As one of our choices for atmospheric autumnal reading, The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell was one of our most anticipated novels of the season. The story of a newly widowed woman arriving to her late husband’s manor in the English countryside only to find a strange house fallen into disrepair, the premise of The Silent Companions is as classic as a gothic novel gets. The foundation of the story will be familiar to all fans of horror—be it novels or movies—but does it live up to the potential those familiar tropes offer or does it fall back on classic mainstays of the genre to anchor an otherwise unremarkable story? For me, the answer isn’t obvious.
One of the most alluring and captivating elements of gothic fiction is the atmosphere it creates, spinning tales that are impossible to turn away from as the story’s suspense, tension, isolation, and foreboding seeps from the pages. While The Silent Companions had an enjoyable gothic atmosphere, I found it a bit lacking. The setting alone and the classic gothic ghost story elements add a sense of isolation and suspense naturally and Purcell’s writing was generally evocative in its descriptions, but something felt thin about it. I wanted a story rich in atmosphere, but I felt that I couldn’t quite discern whether much of this novel’s atmosphere was based in effective writing or reliant on the typical elements of its gothic elements—that old, isolated manor in the country specifically—to do the heavy lifting. While Purcell’s writing was good, I wasn’t as immersed as I would’ve liked. The elements were there, but didn’t click for me. I was continually reminded of The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield while reading The Silent Companions and couldn’t help but compare the sense of atmosphere in each story. I had hoped The Silent Companions would be a similarly immersive, consuming reading experience but, though it had the elements of an atmospheric story, something fell flat.
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The Silent Companions is built upon gothic tropes that all of us recognize and are quite familiar with. As the story began unfolding, it became clear that the paranormal occurrences were following a somewhat typical, and predictable, path. The question became whether the novel would use such tropes to tell a bland, trite tale or use them to enhance an original, compelling plot. As the narrative moves between our main character, Elsie’s, current situation, her experience at The Bridge (the country estate), and a diary account of another woman’s experience at The Bridge 200 years earlier, readers come to question and understand the strange history of the estate and the women who walked its halls. The Silent Companions’ strength is within the story of those women, but the haunting itself falls short, utterly formulaic and predictable. I enjoyed the fact that characters seemed to identify the direction of the haunting relatively early on, acknowledging what felt like the inevitable conclusion to draw and treating it with a realistic reaction. This was unexpected and refreshing, but ultimately didn’t change the course of the haunting the way I thought it might. In terms of the silent companions themselves, they were certainly creepy to imagine—at first. As the story progressed, the moments defining Elsie’s supernatural experience within The Bridge felt increasingly banal. There was a surface-level creepiness, of course, but it didn’t send shivers down my spine or make me tense and diving fully into it revealed nothing more than a run-of-the-mill haunting. I had hoped to be fully engrossed, unable to put the book down and turn off the lights for fear of my own imagination recreating scenes in the dark. Instead, this novel left me wondering if this story would be more effective—and more enjoyable—in movie form, where jump scares and a decent score could do some of the work of making the horror elements impactful. That said, there were still moments of surprising darkness within The Silent Companions that were quite impactful and unexpected.
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The Silent Companions had depth thanks to the exploration of Elsie’s personal history and the history of The Bridge. I found the diary entries of Anne Bainbridge—who lived in The Bridge in 1625—a fantastic inclusion, another well-woven thread within this story, something that we read and learned from alongside the characters. Anne’s story was perhaps the most intriguing to me. The story and tension built nicely, with some rather shocking revelations along the way, however I found myself less than thrilled by the overall story.
The Silent Companions is a classic gothic ghost story in every sense, but it doesn’t extract itself enough from the very basic foundational tropes of gothic fiction enough to stand out in the crowd. It has all the elements of a story I should love, but it felt very middle of the road. A solid ghostly tale with interesting and, at times, horrific happenings, The Silent Companions unfortunately lacked the punch that would have made it something fantastic.
Great review!
Thank you, Diana! I’m glad you enjoyed it! Have you read The Silent Companions?