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A review by elisabeth_julia
The Dumb House by John Burnside
4.0
"The Dumb House" is about a man with dissociative personality disorder and a twisted experiment on his own twin children: He wants to find out how language connects to the soul and therefore seeks to determine if it's inherent or learned somehow.
What terrified me the most wasn't that this man did horrible things throughout the entire book, but that I saw the world through his eyes: I desperately wanted to know the outcome of his experiments and I started viewing the people around him as mere tools for his purposes. I didn't care for any of them and didn't feel the need to cry out loud in shock about what was done to them.
It was like for the duration of the book I became him.
The subject matter of his experiments is a fascinating one. I loved reading about the man's philosophical thoughts about humanity, soul and language. The entire book is densely packed with thought-provoking material and great ideas, which is something I value and highly enjoy.
On top of that "The Dumb House" is absolutely stunningly written.
The portrayal of the main character was eerily realistic too. I have the horrifying suspicion that there is more than one person out there who does worse things behind closed doors somewhere right now at this moment.
The only issue I had with this book was that it's too appalling to read most of the time. I had to set it aside every few pages, which naturally made me lose the ability to really get immersed into the story. The narrators dense stream of consciousness added further to that. However, this is a minor complaint.
"The Dumb House" certainly can't be called an easy read, but it is a fantastic book nevertheless!
What terrified me the most wasn't that this man did horrible things throughout the entire book, but that I saw the world through his eyes: I desperately wanted to know the outcome of his experiments and I started viewing the people around him as mere tools for his purposes. I didn't care for any of them and didn't feel the need to cry out loud in shock about what was done to them.
It was like for the duration of the book I became him.
The subject matter of his experiments is a fascinating one. I loved reading about the man's philosophical thoughts about humanity, soul and language. The entire book is densely packed with thought-provoking material and great ideas, which is something I value and highly enjoy.
On top of that "The Dumb House" is absolutely stunningly written.
The portrayal of the main character was eerily realistic too. I have the horrifying suspicion that there is more than one person out there who does worse things behind closed doors somewhere right now at this moment.
The only issue I had with this book was that it's too appalling to read most of the time. I had to set it aside every few pages, which naturally made me lose the ability to really get immersed into the story. The narrators dense stream of consciousness added further to that. However, this is a minor complaint.
"The Dumb House" certainly can't be called an easy read, but it is a fantastic book nevertheless!