It Was Her House First
Plans to renovate a storied mansion are threatened by its ghosts in Cherie Priest’s secret-laden novel It Was Her House First.
In the 1930s, after the death of her daughter Priscilla, film star Venita commits suicide, orchestrates her bystander husband’s execution, and swears revenge against Detective Bartholomew, whom she blames for the tragedy. Decades later, Ronnie, grieving her brother’s death, purchases Venita’s now dilapidated mansion. While overseeing renovations, Ronnie encounters the mansion’s ghosts and Coty, a neighbor too interested in its dark history.
The book unravels from several perspectives: Bartholomew’s as a ghost, Ronnie’s during repairs, and Venita’s in a rediscovered diary. This multifaceted storytelling is disorienting; though spectral Bartholomew has hindsight knowledge, his invisibility and inability to speak to Ronnie about Venita’s slow awakening and Coty’s shiftiness creates inescapable foreboding and doom. Other tensions accelerate from subtle details and breadcrumbs scattered and disjointed across boundaries of life and death. In a 1930s entry, Venita writes about burying the family’s cat; in the present, Ronnie and other characters spot a platinum-colored cat on the grounds.
While Ronnie’s narration is blunt if colored by self-deprecation and Bartholomew’s is remorseful, Venita’s is personable and heartfelt, bursting with warmth, wit, and maternal love. Venita’s rage over Priscilla’s death, dismissed as insanity, is critical of men, including Bartholomew, who trample innocents for success. Later, Coty’s increasing, suspicious presence suggests living men’s ambitions may be a greater threat than the dead to Ronnie.
With gothic themes, It Was Her House First is a layered novel that examines the guilt and responsibilities owed to deceased loved ones.
Reviewed by
Isabella Zhou
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