Short Story Review: A Cursed House
I write short stories. In fact, my first three works of fiction are short story collections, with one long piece — a novella, helping my journey towards the long form eventually.
Given my penchant for writing short stories, I was waiting to read ‘The Cursed House’, the debut short story of Falguni Jain, a popular reviewer and editor who I know. She has reviewed my work great flair.
The Title:
The title is nuanced. I am sure that most readers easily replaced ‘cursed’ with ‘haunted’ and expect a paranormal theme. A curse is a swear on somebody wishing them bad luck, and ‘cursed’ means a person who is destined to suffer or go through a bad event; while ‘haunted’ is linked to paranormal or horror, more than unpleasant.
The point is that the title always has the clue, especially when the story is a thriller. My point — Falguni has a bit of Agatha Christie in her.
The Plot:
The surprise anniversary gift from Abir to Kyra turns out to be a stay in her ancestral house. The house is dilapidated, despite the cleaning and stocking done by Abir, and the house’s unkempt state combined with Kyra’s recollection of her past, adds to sense of a haunted past. At a point, when Kyra unravels the curse, which I shall keep quiet about, the reader feels that it will befall them too.
Abir’s calm and rational mind cuts through Kyra’s narrative, as he does some investigations on his own. The story ends when Abir meets Kyra after trying to figure out her mysterious past. The last act of the pair, the blindfolding, sets the hearts to race on what would happen next. Here the story ends.
Commentary:
The end is left to the reader, and I felt that it would be anticlimactic, but I am not sure, either. Abir’s calm nature and trust on Kyra, his rational mind which still investigates, juxtaposed with Kyra’s imaginative mind, which strongly believes in a narrative that might be of her own making, leaves the reader in two minds. I am no exception to that.
The story picks pace as we go along, giving a vivid picture of Kyra’s reluctance to stay at the house against Abir’s exuberance in giving the ultimate experience to Kyra on their anniversary. The impact of the events of childhood compounding Kyra’s own nature of being a story teller and the discovery of possible truth by Abir at each stage, impresses the reader deeply, showing the the development of the characters — Abir’s rationality and trust, Kyra’s imaginative mind and the mystery of her behavior.
It is an interesting and thrilling read, keeping the reader engrossed as they discover themselves hanging, after being left to their elements, literally blindfolded at the end.
A great debut piece by Falguni.
Link:
Pick a copy in Amazon or read in Kindle. https://www.amazon.in/Cursed-House-Falguni-Jain-ebook/dp/B0982F7ZP3/
~Ashok Subramanian
