The Silent Companion proved perfectly why I love Gothic stories. Creepiness and uncertainty can become the most addictive poison when combined, and Laura Purcell did an excellent job. Her writing style reminded me a little bit of The Miniaturist; both books have a subtle and smooth beauty in them, which I immensely enjoy. I swear to you…they’ll suffer for what they’ve done. All that you’ve endured will look like nothing - nothing! After I’m through with them.” Colwell, J., Schröder, S. & Sladen, D. (2000). The ability to detect unseen staring: A literature review and empirical tests. British Journal of Psychology, 91(1), 71-85 My baby. Rotten to the core. Every memory of her childhood takes on a sordid, shameful appearance. Was she a demon from the very womb? But of course she was. What else could she be, at once unnatural and misbegotten?” A big thank you to Edelweiss, Frontlist and Laura Purcell for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review!!

Spooky Spectacular Stars! This was my kind of book and the perfect Halloween read that I read along with six of my Traveling Sisters! Ruth’s story takes you on a journey from her dark and traumatic childhood, into a life of servitude under an unforgiving mistress. The Silent Companions is a gothic, foreboding, spooky ghost story. It is very well written and I especially enjoyed the setting of the crumbling mansion (named The Bridge) in England. The story alternates between events of 1635 to the present day of 1865. Purcell created a very good suspense at the beginning, but as we moved on in the story, more and more characters were added, the story line became unstructured, sloppy at times. She couldn't tie all ends together as there were too many fronts open. I really wanted to read this book after I came across the blurb, and the reality certainly didn't disappoint. The narrative is shared by two young women in Victorian England, Dorothea, a wealthy heiress, and Ruth, a seamstress imprisoned for the murder of her mistress. Dorothea has an interest in phrenology, the study of peoples skulls to see if they have a propensity for murder among other things, and when she comes across Ruth during a charitable visit to the local gaol, she can't help but try to read her skull. As the two women become closer over the course of Dorothea's visits, Ruth's story unveils, her shattered childhood, her abuse from her employers, and the fact that she seems to be able to control peoples fates through the clothes she makes for them.

Finally, there was some weirdness going on about class that rubbed me the wrong way. Elsie is presented as having risen ‘above her station’ by marrying Rupert, and so a number of times expresses compassion for poor and lower class people, but she’s also really rude to the servants throughout the book. Not to mention being inexcusably rude to poor Sarah. Sarah was the only character I really liked, so it was depressing to see her either replaced or possessed by Hetta at the end.

How scary to live during that time! Geez just learning what was in some of the fabrics/fabric colors made at that time gives new meaning to the saying: Beauty hurts. Why not wear a Victorian bone corset while you are at it and have someone tighten you in? This was an excellent choice for a Traveling Sister Read! I enjoyed reading this along with my “sisters” Brenda, Norma, Diane S, Dana and Holly B. They helped me get through the frighteningly creepy parts, although I still may have to sleep with the lights on for a while. I loved The Silent Companions and loved this book as well. It's Gothic and evokes feelings of dread. In some ways this book reminded me of another book I loved The Unseeing about a woman in prison accused of murder telling her story. The plots are different, but both felt the same. All of this leads up to a perfectly crafted climax, until the final word of The Silent Companions drops like a bomb on everything you thought you knew. This was one of those books that I had a hard time rating. Throughout my reading, I felt like it was on the verge of a 4-star-read, but I also felt like the full potential was somehow missing. However, having now finished the book I’m confident that it’s a 4-star-read. It’s an uncanny gothic novel that will mess with your mind (and maybe provide you with a few sleepless nights), and it’s the perfect autumnal read for when you’re in the mood for a psychological horror story that will creep you out but that also messes with your mind and takes its share of twists and turns.It’s not the only thing I read, but it’s certainly something that’s overrepresented on my bookshelf. Layering on thedark and creepy, thisintriguingly plottednovel is the full-blownGothic, maintaining throughoutan unsettling claustrophobic atmospheremixed with some unusual historical detail.” Ghost storiesarehaving a revival at present, and The Silent Companions . . .is a worthy newcomer to the genre. . . . These silent companions . . .are one of the creepiest concepts I’ve come across in a ghost story,both frightening and original. . . . The writing is strong and the concept provides a fresh twist on an old classic.”

Granqvist, P., Fredrikson, M., Unge, P. et al. (2005). Sensed presence and mystical experiences are predicted by suggestibility, not by the application of transcranial weak complex magnetic fields. Neuroscience Letters, 379(1), 1–6. Of these three explanations, the body-mapping theory has perhaps the most evidence to date, but accounts emphasising the social, agentic and affective elements of presences are also likely to be crucial. Understanding how comforting presences can occur in grief while terrifying presences haunt sleep paralysis will depend on further examination of what drives such vivid alterations and dissociations to the mappings of self and other. And in addition to this, each may also have something to say about another unusual phenomenon: hearing voices. At the prison, Dorothea becomes fascinated with Ruth, a young seamstress who believes that she can embed her emotions into her sewn garments. For example, by focusing her hate into her sewing needle, the resulting garment can become a type of weapon against whoever wears it. Ruth is imprisoned as a murderess, and much of the book is devoted to Ruth telling her story to Dorothea, including elaboration of her supposed powers. That unsettling, evocative smell of silence enveloped you. There it was again, in the shadow of the house—a lover’s whisper, seductive but dangerous. Did people know when they were going insane? she wondered. Did they feel the weave of their mind ripping apart?"Jardri, R., Pouchet, A., Pins, D. & Thomas, P. (2011). Cortical activations during auditory verbal hallucinations in schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 168(1), 73–81.

The Silent Companions is Laura Purcell’s unnerving tale of Gothic horror that gradually reveals itself over multiple timeframes. The novel opens during an undisclosed year as the main character, Elsie Bainbridge, finds herself imprisoned in an asylum. She is suspected of murder and arson and has lost the ability to speak. Inexplicably, she is also covered with terrible burns. Despite coming from such different contexts, the overlapping phenomenology of presence experiences raises the intriguing question of whether some underlying cognitive and neurological mechanisms may unite their occurrence. There are broadly three main hypotheses that attempt to explain felt presence: body-mapping, threat, and social representation (see Cheyne, 2011, for a review). Finally, Nielsen (2007) and Fénelon et al. (2011) have described the experience of presences as a social hallucination (i.e. a kind of pure perception of social agency, divorced from its ordinary sensory correlates such as a face or voice). While presences vary in body position and emotional affect, they very often feel like they have a specific identity with its own agency (irrespective of whether that identity is actually known to the perceiver), suggesting the involvement of social-cognitive processes. Fénelon et al. (2011) argue for this by pointing to the common occurrence of presences with known and familiar identities in PD, which in many cases will be people who have just left a scene (what they term ‘palinparousia’). Similarly, in presences following bereavement, the persisting identity of the perception is a clearly crucial part of the experience. I listened to this one on Audible and the narrator was excellent and added to my enjoyment of the story but I really can’t help wishing I had a hard copy for my real life book shelf to sit alongside copy. I liked the sense of vagueness left at the end of the novel. The story was left open to the readers interpretation which suited the novel completely.Thank you to Edelweiss, Penguin Books and Laura Purcell for the opportunity to read and review an advance copy. Dorothea is an amateur phrenologist from the privileged class who believes that an individual's character is determined by the contours and lumps on their skull. This raises the Calvinistic-type question about whether a person's fate is predetermined by the shape of their skull, or if the skull can adapt its shape in response to an individual's good or evil deeds. Dorothea devotes her time to visiting with prisoners, both as charity and to collect data to answer this question and further her studies. All these different elements combine to make an eerie story where everything creeps along, I thought it might have been too slow but honestly it was perfect to build up this feeling of dread.