Description

‘A delicious, diverse, genre-bending gothic, as smart as it is spooky’ Chloe Benjamin

During your three years at Catherine House you will have no contact with those in the outside world.

Each of our students has been selected as someone who belongs here. You will give to Catherine and Catherine will give to you.

We will not let each other down.

Catherine House is a university like no other. Into its celebrated world steps Ines, a young woman who welcomes the school’s isolation rather than its illustrious past. As the gates close and Ines finds herself start to be inevitably seduced by its magnetic power, she begins to realise the question isn’t why she chose to come to Catherine House; but why Catherine House chose her.

‘A brilliantly observed tale brimming with subtle malevolence’ Irenosen Okojie

‘Echoes of The Secret History and Never Let Me Go’ Daily Mail

‘Moody and evocative as a fever dream, CATHERINE HOUSE is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step’ Washington Post

Publisher Review

Catherine House is a haunting, atmospheric reflection on the discovery of self and others. At times terrifying, always gorgeously captivating, Thomas' debut is one not to be missed, and perhaps to be revisited frequently * Booklist * Moody and evocative as a fever dream, CATHERINE HOUSE is the sort of book that wraps itself around your brain, drawing you closer with each hypnotic step * Washington Post * Spellbinding... Surreal imagery, spare characterization, and artful, hypnotic prose lend Thomas's tale a delirious air, but at the book's core lies a profound portrait of depression and adolescent turmoil. Fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History will devour this philosophical fever dream * Publisher's Weekly * Thomas's debut novel is a dark, delicious gothic read that hits all the right spots in the best way. If you want a book you can't put down for even a second, this is it * Forbes, 10 most anticipated books of 2020 * A brilliantly observed tale brimming with subtle malevolence. An atmospheric, hypnotic delight * Irenosen Okojie * Gothic horror provides the architecture for an arrestingly strange melange of speculative fiction and teen trauma in this atmospheric debut novel . . . nibbling menace spurs the plot onwards * Observer * This suspenseful read is a terrific debut * Woman's Weekly * This has to be one of the most gripping books I've read this year... The read feels claustrophobic, decadent, extreme and sad in equal measure, and I was amazed by the plot * Woman's Way * Echoes of Donna Tartt's The Secret History and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go contribute an intriguing undercurrent to this unsettling gothic concoction * Daily Mail * [A] delicious literary gothic debut * New York Times * Catherine House is a deliciously sinister novel that bristles with an unsettling glamour. It's almost impossible not to be seduced by Elisabeth Thomas's beautiful writing and the intoxicating world she has created * Louise O'Neill * A delicious, diverse, genre-bending gothic, as smart as it is spooky -- Chloe Benjamin