It's been decades since I read this! I think I must have been about twelve, and I have the vaguest recollection of one of the sequels... but the plot of this book stayed very firmly embedded. Often I read stories and forget about them, especially after so much time has passed, but I remembered nearly every point about this. Which is strange, really, as I don't think it's so much as passed my mind in the intervening years. Then I saw it at the library and felt nostalgic - or as nostalgic as anyone can feel for such a horror of a story.

If there's one thing gothic horror does well, and that haunted house stories do well, it's that sense of creeping corruption. The mother here didn't start out evil, but there's compromise after compromise, hidden away in the background, until she's as monstrous, if not more so, than her own terrible parents. And for so long, the only one who can see it is her own young daughter. One of the things I don't remember, that I certainly experienced now, was the sense of frustration at how Cathy's suspicions were always brushed aside, by her older brother and by herself. She'd always talk herself out of them, and it's not fair to blame either of them - they're only kids - but there were times I want to shake the brother, especially, to see if the scales would ever fall off. They do (and they were only lightly attached for so long, but survival meant complicity), but of course it was too late by then.

I'll have to make sure I read the rest this time round! I want to see if anything happens to that terrible mother...