A House and Its Head by Ivy Compton-Burnett, Pushkin Press, £9.99

According to Hilary Mantel, Ivy ComptonBurnett once said a plot was only a “washing line” on which she hung her stories. Nowhere in Compton-Burnett’s repertoire of 18 publications is this more evident than in A House and Its Head. To begin with, this novel seems like a light-hearted Jane Austen affair, where the opening chapter sets out the family dynamics at a Christmas breakfast in 1885, but things rapidly become more Muriel Spark-ish after we are introduced to Duncan Edgeworth, timid wife, Ellen, daughters Nance and Sybil, and nephew Grant who is set to inherit the house. Everything changes when Ellen dies.

Written almost entirely in quirky period dialogue, the reader is immersed in the dramas of the Edgeworth family but it is neither the male head nor his self-destructive nephew who dominate this wonderfully humorous Victorian farce-cometragedy, but a deviant flock of women. This consists of contrasting siblings, the moral Nance and the cunning Sybil, village gossip Dulcia, rival cousins Beatrice and Florence and the beautiful but scheming young Alison, destined to become the second Mrs Edgeworth. Former governess Cassie Jekyll is another independent female figure, who eventually must bow to economic convention by consenting to be Duncan’s third wife, after Alison’s scandalous behaviour, but Cassie’s mother Gretchen is both fearsome and, in the end, wiser than supposed.

Mortality and death are key themes and although treated rather flippantly alongside inheritance and

marital alliances, the reality of women’s precarious financial position in these patriarchal times is not

understated. Neither too are the measures some will go to in order to avenge themselves and to manipulate

life’s changes to their own advantage. The power the wealthy hold over their servants is another central issue and it is not only men who are guilty in this respect – leading to horrendous events, ending in murder itself. Gossip is rife but when the truth emerges, the community closes ranks and deals with the crimes with typical Victorian hypocrisy. Virtue is ignored and vice rewarded, as events settle and the inheritance is secured.

This novel both delighted and astounded me in its witty dialogue and complex characters, leading to a shocking climax of almost Gothic proportions. I loved it!