The Uninvited (Recovered Voices Book 2)

This is a wonderfully-gripping ghost story. The writing is exquisite, and the characters, motivations and landscapes authentic. It is a little dated in terms of language and references - but don't let that put you off; this all adds to its charm and its sense of the past. It's a long read, but I devoured it. My correct guess at the outcome (no spoilers here) didn't spoil my enjoyment of it. I also enjoyed the sub-plots, especially Roddy's playwriting. The tongue-in-cheekness of am author writing about the absorption of writing was an added layer of sophistication. Highly recommended.

An interesting story of hauntings which is lost among the unexplained fascination of the brother and sister duo with the character of Stella and the main character's grandstanding of himself and his theatre friends.

The film version is a classic and i'm pleased to say that the book does not disappoint.

The movie made from this book is one of my favorites. The book is a very good read and, as is common, adds so much more to the story.

Good luck in finding the original titled novel anywhere. Copies are hard to come by in any condition. Mine is "The Literary Guild of America," 1942. Hard Cover. The dust jacket has a picture of a house and a tree over looking a cliff to the see. At first I thought it was taken from the scene in the movie by the same name. However that is the description in the book. There is even an edition that was made for the troops during the war. And not any cheaper is the Bantam Books, 1947 Paperback.Unless you collect screen plays, be careful as the play is also out in book form.I first saw the movie (1944) that is good in its own right. Staring Ray Milland and Ruth Hussey. You know it will be different but which one is better. In this case they are quite different and both just as good in different ways.Roderick Fitzgerald and his sister Pamela are in search of a house and find one with some beach front. After negotiation the price they move in and may have found more then the bargain.The story is refreshing. However the real worth of the book is the writing style of Dorothy Macardle. I was not prepared with my English to English conversion books. She also writes in the time of the time and uses terms local to the England of the 40's If you like this story then she also wrote "The Unforeseen" equally as good.

I'm so glad that Tramp Press decided to re-release this book. The Uninvited is a classic, gothic ghost story. The writing is beautiful and there are some spine-tingling scenes. Pamela and brother Roderick relocate to the Devon coast to a bargain price property called Cliff End. They soon find that the price is so low because the property is haunted. The terror in this starts off light and builds steadily throughout the book. Like any great ghost story this is evocative and has a brilliant mystery at the centre. I loved it :)

First of all, the story is done, those that have lived it, know it. Those that survived it, know it, remember it, but will not admit it. But this story happened and now all that remains is its recounting. And now that's what Roderick Fitzgerald, a freelance writer is doing. And so now the story begins . . . Set during a mythical 1942 in England, where the raging world war doesn't seem to exist, and Roderick and his younger sister Pamela, are "disappointed" by their living in London and they are now looking for a new home when they stumble upon Cliff End, a magnificent, and abandoned, home on the outskirts of the village Biddlecombe in North Devon. They get into contact with the owner and his granddaughter, Commander Brooke and Stella Meredith, respectively, and the Commander reluctantly agrees to sell the white elephant cheap. So the siblings move, bringing their housekeeper Lizzie Flynn, and her cat Whiskey, with them from London. Lizzie will be a stabilizing force for them, a stable, loyal, and good person, unfortunately she's also superstitious, and who is often used as this novel's comic foil. Meanwhile after moving into Cliff End, Roderick is having problems, he's trying to work through a writer's block on a book, which sounds terrible dull to us, and which he really doesn't seem to care much about himself. Then he finds new inspiration in writing a new play. So the moving, the settling in, and the writing are all happening while the siblings are battling the increasingly oppressive atmosphere of the house, which may, or may not, be haunted. So at about the hundred page mark the reader will begin to realize that "The Uninvited" is a novel that will have several divergent plotlines, all of which are related. The first is, is Cliff End really haunted, or are the characters imaging the cold spots, the odors, and the ghostly images that seem to happening? Another is the domestic plotline as Roderick and Pamela try to upgrade Cliff End for their habitability, to settle in, and for Roderick to get his writing career back on track. And the last is that this book is a detective story. And like all good detective and mystery novels, this book starts out all pastel, as Macardle word paints a wonderfully optimistic and homey picture of Cliff End as the Fitzgerald's new home. We then get to view this new future starts going south as the ghostly things start happening, and as the siblings start investigating, more and more dark secrets end up getting uncovered, including, as we, and they, find out that there have been several deaths in the grand old house, at least one of which may have been a murder. And like all good fair-play mysteries, Macardle gives us all the clues to what has happened, and is happening, in the house, and of the novel's denouement, if you just pay attention. Into the mix are a number of interesting characters that will be used to tell "The Uninvited"'s story. Like the Commander, who is rather anti-social, and who is also a rigid, mean, controlling man, who will brook no back talk, or behavior that contradicts his own beliefs. Or Stella Meredith, a waifish, and innocent, young woman who has been browbeaten by her grandfather and her village into a mold that she can't fit into. Stella is a lonely woman whose in desperate need for the friendship of Roderick and Pamela, but whose loyalty to her grandfather, and whose idolization of her dead mother is tearing her apart. And last and not least, there are the two dead characters Mary Meredith, Stella's mother, and Carmel, Mary's maid, artist's model, and gypsy. As the novel progresses we find that Mary has been idolized and idealized by her family, and the village, while Carmel has been vilified, as the tramp, the slut, the other woman, and the "other". Of course, I'm not really giving much away here if you've seen the movie from 1944, because if you have, you already know all of this. And the movie follows the novel rather faithfully, at least until the second half, which deviates somewhat from the parent story. Miss Holloway, for instance get much more screentime than she gets pagetime, and the town doctor is played up as being Pamela's possible suitor in the book, while the character is an old country doctor in the movie. But, still, all the major scenes of the movie are here in the book, I think, after all, it's been years since I've seen the movie. I read somewhere that Macardle that was a socialist, if so, it really doesn't show other than in the end, this book turns out to be a scathing attack on the cult of personality, as everybody seems to worship the very ground that Mary has trod upon. But, it's also a love story, as Roderick fights to free Stella from her imprisonment of the past, and Mary's legacy. There is also a slightly feminist flavor to this book as all the females are constantly undervalued by the more conservative people of this novel. This novel has drama, suspense, romance, melodrama, occult practices, idol worship, self-imposed blinders, hauntings, ghosts, possible possession, etc. When I first read this book about fifteen years ago it put me to sleep, but I suspect that this was the book itself, and reading the more reader friendly hard cover, there were times when I just couldn't put it down. Still, for me now, once the novel got started I was never bored. This time around I also saw future echoes in this book of what would later turn up in classic psychologically based ghost stories like Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting Of Hill House" and Richard Matheson's "Hell House". This book has been out-of-print for way too long. Somebody should do something about that. Although I should warn you that those raised on books like the Harry Potter books will probably find the prose a bit too formal, but it is what it is, and I enjoyed Dorothy Macardle's "The Uninvited". Over the years I have read the following ghost stories that I would recommend. Cecilia de Noel (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press)  by Lanoe Falconer. Ghost Pilot  by Anton Emmerton. The Haunting of Hill House (Penguin Modern Classics)  by Shirley Jackson. Hell House  by Richard Matheson. A Stir of Echoes  by Richard Matheson. The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (Charnwood Library)  edited by Richard Dalby. Witch House  by Evangeline Walton.