Where I End
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3.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, a modern gothic horror where a young woman falls into a dark obsession after a new artist and her baby arrive on her small Irish island.
At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Sometimes in the morning we find her in places. We never see her move. We just come upon her.
Aoileann is cursed. She has no friends, never gone to school. She has never left this windswept craggy isle off the coast of Ireland.
Her mother is cursed: a silent wreck Aoileann calls the “bed-thing.” Alongside her grandmother, Aoileann’s days are an endless monotony of feeding, changing, and caring for the bed-thing.
Their island seems cursed, whispering secrets only Aoileann hears. Then Rachel, a vivacious artist from the mainland, arrives with her colicky newborn. Rachel arouses yearnings Aoileann cannot fully comprehend. Soon, the unfolding of her mother’s secret tragedy and Aoileann’s pursuit of her own dark desires are both destined to unleash a maelstrom upon all three of their lives.
Described by New York Times–bestselling author John Connolly as “perhaps the finest Irish horror novel of the 21st century,” Where I End is a modern Irish gothic that will pull readers into its undertow of family resentments and relentless obsession.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
White (The Snag List) brings horror to the cliffs of the Irish islands in this eerily atmospheric outing. Bitter and isolated Aoileann lives as an accursed outcast from the other residents of her native island. In her rotting family home, she and her grandmother, Móraí, care for her bed-bound and speechless mother, whom Aoileann has resented for most of her life. When not attending to her mother, Aoileann weathers the cruelty and violence of her neighbors. Meanwhile, unaware of the island's culture or history, mainlander Rachel comes to town with her newborn son for a monthlong artist residency. With their arrival, Aoileann makes her first ever friend—and drags up from the depths an evil that the entire island is afraid of. White uses the costal landscape and decaying village to create a palpable sense of isolation and dread. Indeed, the initial air of anxious revulsion is so powerful that the final revelation about the island's secrets doesn't feel like a big enough payoff. Still, this brutal tale has plenty to entertain fans of folk and body horror.