Dora's Room - Book Review

Resident in the house is a motley collection of her relatives. These had been waiting her grandfather's death with great expectation and are far from pleased that the old man left everything to Fern. Amongst the characters are Gerald, a spoilt brat cousin, Tilly her grandfather's half-demented second wife, and Archie her uncle.

Archie. World famous author of the critically acclaimed novel "Dora's Room" around which the story revolves. A novel that has had readers speculating for years. Is it autobiographical? Who was Dora and where was the room in which the novel is set? Archie has always refused to answer any questions.

Fern returns to Chatton Heights and is assailed by unwanted and usually unpleasant memories. The book concerns her attempts to piece together the puzzle of her past and to discover the truth. What - if anything - was the real story behind the death of her father and the insanity of her mother? All these things and more are tightly bound up with the mystery of Dora's Room itself. As Fern discovers more and more it seems that she herself is in danger. Yet there is no concrete evidence of wrongdoing. Has she inherited her mother's madness? Fern becomes concerned as much for her sanity as for her life.

An unexpected inheritance, an old mansion and a strange family sounds like the start of cliché-ridden formulaic pot-boiler. In fact Hines takes a very different tack. This is a book about memory, deception and madness. It's all about character and atmosphere.

Dora's Room is published as "general fiction", presumably to give it a cachet that genre fiction can never achieve. Yet it is in many respects a sophisticated crime thriller; it's just that a significant part of the mystery is whether or not there actually was a crime at all. If there was a crime, exactly what was it? Hines does an excellent job of building up uneasy tension. The reader, along with Fern, simply knows that something is wrong.

It's very well written, even if Hines does at times seem to be struggling a little too hard to find a "literary" turn of phrase. That aside it's more than competent and very evocative. The way that Fern's whole life and history are slowly dismantled is almost dreamlike and we share her fears for her sanity. There's a great deal of foreshadowing, with dark hints being given as to what is coming.

Yet it didn't quite work. I was definitely caught up in the tale, but at the same time felt rather disassociated from it. The structure of the book means that most of the story occurred in the past and we are slowly unravelling it. The story is fascinating from an intellectual angle, unfortunately it's difficult to become emotionally involved for the first part of the book. Until events come up to date near the end it's all a little clinical.

This is connected to the book's other major problem: it's too long. The story does not have quite enough twists and turns to justify 374 pages. There's an awful lot of build-up before things really reach a head. Taking out fifty pages or so from the first half would improve things greatly.

Oh, and get rid of the epilogue; the book ends quite properly without it. Inclusion of an unnecessary explanatory chapter is - along with the American friend - suggestive that Hines was thinking of the movie rights when she wrote this.

Dora's Room has serious flaws. Despite these it's a very readable story and worth a go.