![]() ![]() ![]() Nathaniel is a man with his very own skeleton cupboard. Small wonder that most of the inmates speak of ghosts. ![]() ![]() Crakethorne is a dark and ominous building, built with grey stone with no embellishments to soften it’s demeanour, set in unkempt grounds that play home to the many crows that the book is named for it’s a place of howling winds and harsh treatments. Crakethorne bares little resemblance to the material Nathaniel read prior to taking up his new role and his initial description puts you in mind of the foreboding Thornfield House from Jane Eyre. Perhaps Nathaniel was naive in taking this position, if first impressions are anything to go by that is. Wilkie Collins certainly sprang to mind whilst reading this – although I’m not suggesting that the story is the same in any way – more the style of writing somehow, not to mention the theme of women being closeted into asylums when they became problematic to their husbands.Īt the start of the story we meet Nathaniel Kerner as he takes up his position at Crakethorne Asylum, a remote institution based in the wilds of Yorkshire. The story is positively bursting at the scenes with the trappings of a novel set in this era, asylums, mad doctors, mesmerists, ghosts and pea soup fog, and yet the author manages to inject new life into those tropes by introducing such an unusual story and at the same time giving, to my mind, a nod to maybe a couple of the classics. The Crow Garden is a wonderfully evocative novel that brings to us a gothic story set in Victorian England. ![]()
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