Why a Booktrail?
2000s: The trouble with looking for something is that you might find it..
The Hoarder
What you need to know before your trail
Maud Drennan is the latest in a long line of dogsbodies for the ancient, belligerent Cathal Flood. He’s seen many home helps run from the house, vowing to never return.
But Maud is keen to stay – there’s something about this house which enthrals her, intrigues her, even if Cathal Flood is a grumpy old man. This filthy, once-grand home and its junk-filled rooms are opening up to her.
With only her agoraphobic landlady and a troop of sarcastic ghostly saints to help, Maud must uncover what lies beneath Cathal’s decades-old hostility, and the strange activities of the house itself. And if someone has hidden a secret there, how far will they go to ensure it remains buried?
Travel Guide
Dorset
There aren’t really any locations in this book apart from part of the story in the past taking place off the page in Dorset. The village of Langton Cheney is a fictional one but Dorset is the background for a missing girl and a mystery.
London
The house however where Cathal Flood lives with his ghosts is the only setting in the novel – a gothic old crumbling house which seems even worse than those you see on the TV programme Secret Hoarders. It would be a lot of fun to see Cathal Flood and his piles of rubbish and grime on the screen. You can smell the stench of the house from the pages, feel the bugs, see the towering pile of rotting newspapers…
Bridlemere is the house
“The only way in now is through the back gate, past satellites of sheds and decaying outhouses. Along a path lined with dismembered bicycles, eviscerated mattresses and abandoned car batteries”
It’s likened to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, if the castle had been abandoned, locked up for years, allowed the forest to swallow it and reclaim it into the soil…
The woman employed to help him has trouble with what she faces:
“I wade , tripping over boxes and piles of mildewing curtains, getting caught in cables, hooked on hat stands and assaulted byu rutting ironing boards. I flounder over records, books stained blankets, greasy collections of plastic bags, garden forks, antique mangles, a woman’s patent leather shoe and an unopened blender that also grates and peels. And cats, cats, cats.
And that is just the start..
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Hoarder
Destination: London, Dorset Author/Guide: Jess Kidd Departure Time: 2000s
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