Somewhere in the Black House is a presence so
intrusive and unexpected it must be a ghost. Alfred
Munday, an anthropologist, and his wife, Emma, have
left Africa after a long period in a tiny, remote
village. They arrive in an English village deep in
the Dorset countryside and almost immediately sense
the haunting presence of a lovely woman neither of
them can name. Their marriage has been made uneasy
by their African experience and they do not confide
their suspicions.
The menacing tension mounts as Emma receives
strange commands from the spectral woman, but it is
left to Alfred to carry out the commands and manage
the complex bewilderments of this new village with
its mood of threat. In doing so, he begins to
understand how his marriage and study have exiled
him and how a return home means a return to older
fears and desires.
Terror and the lurking of what seems supernatural
in that most ghostly of places -- the English
country house -- are the keynotes of this remarkable
novel. But it is more than a bewitching ghost story.
It is about marriage, isolation and the kind of
elemental response that pervades our most civilized
acts. Mr. Theroux’s gift for describing the comic
side of colonial displacement has been celebrated.
Here, in this latest novel, he deals with the
extreme anxiety that underlies all comedy, revealing
a wholly convincing portrait of a haunted man. In
The Black Rouse, he has revitalized a traditional
tale to say as much about our age and its
discontents as it does about the origin of our
fears. |
