TITLE: The House of Drought
AUTHOR: Dennis Mombauer
106 pages, Stelliform Press, ISBN 978177709178 (paperback, e-book)
MY RATING: 4 stars out of 5
SHORT REVIEW: Mombauer expertly weaves threads from different times through the common ground of a haunted house, keeping the reader guessing as to how it will all come together. The taste of dust and a sense of desperation permeate every page, with hope blooming unexpectedly in small corners.
LONG REVIEW: In The House of Drought, Dennis Mombauer combines the tropes of classic Gothic literature – an abandoned mansion with a questionable history situated in a remote location – with the contemporary climate emergency and Sri Lankan history to create a tightly-written novella that keeps the reader guessing how it will all come together as it spans multiple time frames and drips with atmosphere. The taste of dust and a sense of desperation permeate almost every page, with hope blooming unexpectedly in small corners.
The mansion at the hear of things is a Sri Lankan colonialist relic, long abandoned by the Europeans who built it when a caretaker named Ushu brings four children there to protect them from racially biased violence. When thugs arrive to collect a debt, eldest child Jasmit leads most of the children into a bathroom whose running tap is a portal to a mystical Dry House. The Dry House is both haven and horror. One child runs into the forest that surrounds the plantation, encountering the supernatural Sap Mother, who has her own agenda.
Parts of the story are told through Jasmit’s eyes, and parts through those of a climate disaster documentarian who has become obsessed with the plantation and begins investigating its history and reputation – including another family who lived there after Ushu’s charges disappeared. The shifts between POVs, the stories within stories, are sometimes jarring – but that adds to the overall sense that something is very not right with this house and the forest surrounding it, something dangerous that continues to threaten adults and children alike. I think this is part of the reason the story has lingered with me months after my initial reading: I feel as off-kilter as the characters do.
The generational similarities and differences, the backgrounds the characters are coming from, also add to that overall atmosphere … almost, but not quite, a “the more things change, the more they remain the same” feeling. I know very little about the history of Sri Lanka, and I do wonder how this book resonates with readers more familiar with the actual history.
Another reason the book has lingered with me is that pure atmosphere. The sweltering heat of the climate-change present day scenes is palpable, as is the parched sur-reality of the Dry House. Mombauer is at his best with the visceral sensory details (I felt dehydrated just reading the Dry House scenes), as well as in the way he expressed the unreality of the supernatural forces at work. Even his “jump scares” are potent.
I suppose if there’s one thing I wanted more of it was Sap Mother. A looming presence throughout, a counterpoint to the Dry House (both malevolent but in different ways), I felt like she deserved a bit more screen time than she got. But the scenes she does get are chillingly effective.
The House of Drought clocks in at a fast, engrossing 106 pages, and I suspect I’ll be seeing something new every time I re-read it.