Her interactions with Dame Hicks and the boarding girls were well executed and a really enjoyable part of the novel. I liked Thea as a character, and related to her professional insecurities, although I felt that the relationship with her father was a bit underdone – more a sketch than a painting. But the sisterhood and support women offer one another brings brightness to the dark, and helps Thea unravel the mystery.
The overall tone of the contemporary story is rather spooky and full of omens, hinting at a dark event from the building’s past.
We also follow fabric pattern designer Mary-Louise Stephenson in the 1700s as she tries to break into a male-dominanted industry with her unique floral designs. In the late 1700s, maid Rowan Caswell finds herself working for a silk merchant whose business dealings are not all they seem. In the present day, we follow Thea Rust as she leaves Australia following her father’s death to teach history at the elite boarding school he attended in Wilshire, England. Filled with Nunn’s trademark feminist themes and rich settings, this was a perfect read to sink into. Anchored around the eponymous silk merchant’s house – an elite boarding school accommodation building in contemporary times – we watch the lives of grieving women unfold, as past dark deeds come to light.
The Silk House is Kayte Nunn’s latest dual timeline historical/contemporary fiction offering, and it is a deliciously Gothic one.
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