‘There was something about the way the dancers inhabited their bodies and the music and the stage all at once, as if they too had a skin of constraint which began at the backdrop and ended at the footlights, and they wanted nothing more than to be a frenzied and beautiful haunting of the space between.
It hurt exquisitevly to witness this without a body of her own.
It hurt and it was perfect.’

I picked up Cinder House because firstly, I love fairytale retellings – even ones done as often as ‘Cinderella’. It’s probably not my favourite fairytale, but I was interested to see what Freya Marske had done with the story. Which brings me on to the second reason why I picked it up; because I adored Freya Marske’s storytelling in her Last Binding trilogy (A Marvellous Light). 

That was the extent of my expectations going into Cinder House; as ever, I went into it knowing as little as I could. Small wonder then that the opening page swept me up the way it did, and how impressed I was by this intricately clever retelling by the end:

‘Ella’s father died of the poison in their tea. Ella drank less and so might have lived, and not turned ghost at all, if the house hadn’t shrieked for its master’s murder in the moment she stood, dizzied and weak, at the top of the stairs.’

In the first two lines of this book we have a double murder, a sentient house, and a ghost. Marske wastes no time setting the scene and we are under no allusions that this is indeed a Gothic retelling, giving a respectful nod to the darker earliest versions of this tale whilst creating something uniquely new. This time round, ‘Cinderella’ – Ella – is a ghost. Murdered by her step-mother who inherits instead of her, Ella’s haunting is intrinsically interwoven with the house itself as she becomes an element of its sentience. Anyone belonging of the home, her step-mother and two step-sisters, can see Ella; they soon discover that by damaging the house they can control Ella and thus have a maid who never tires, who doesn’t require wages or feeding. As a ghost, Ella is literally overlooked by all else and even in death, discovers there is no escape from the machinations of her step-family. Make no mistakes about it, this is undeniably the ‘Cinderella’ story, all the beats are there – a fairy who is able to see her when others cannot and casts a spell for her, magical shoes, a prince, the midnight curfew – we get three balls, not just the one, because three is inarguably a more magical number and must appear in a fairytale at some point. Marske even finds a way to include the search for Ella following the festivities.

But, and I cannot stress this enough (whilst also desperately skipping around spoilers), none of those elements are what you might typically expect. Marske twists each beat of the typical story in such a way that I found myself not knowing what would happen next – which in a fairytale retelling of ‘Cinderella’ is frankly remarkable. We have a great deal more magic, there are sorceresses and curses, fairies and ballet and skeletons in the closet. I wanted to talk more about the Gothic elements, as this is another aspect Marske does so wonderfully well. There is an aching melancholic loneliness to Ella, but she is also full of that spirited Gothic heroine aware of her own sexuality. Portraying Ella’s haunting through the house is a delectable feast for the senses as she expresses her emotions and references her reactions through the chimneys, hearths, shutters and rooftiles. It’s a wonderfully evocative way of exploring both Gothic tropes of sentient houses and ghostly women.

‘She’d spent so long trapped in the colours of her father’s house and in her father’s favourite dress. And now this: something more wondrous than she’d ever have thought of or chosen for herself.’

There are brilliantly feminist moments like this, further represented in the featuring of a room with peeling yellow wallpaper… Ella is confined by her haunting to her father’s house, trapped in the dress she died in which was her father’s favourite dress, not hers. But it is Ella herself who is the instrument of her freedom, as she discovers a loophole in her haunting. She may be tormented and oppressed, but she is not a princess awaiting rescue and instead orchestrates her own education and escape.

‘… he was dancing the way the thunderstorm had felt against Ella’s roof – he was thunder and lightning and the throat-closing beauty of charcoal clouds; he was the echoing din of water and the way the bottom fell out of the air. He was something far too fine and hot to be touched and yet touching him was the only possible response.’

The Gothic is also a key genre for representing the repression of female sexuality, and again this is a key theme explored by Marske in aching tenderness. It wouldn’t be a Marske book if there were not some spice (not as much as the Last Binding, this is just a novella after all), but it is balanced so well against Ella’s self discovery and awakening; her ability to be physical with another is literally magical for her and is ultimately what leads her to freedom.

The fact that Cinder House is a novella still surprises me, as Marske is able to weave such a great deal into this story; it’s atmospherica, melancholic, claustrophic… but never feels overdone or rushed. Marske’s writing is utterly sublime in this breathtakingly beautiful story which, in killing this done-to-death figure, ironically breathes new life into a previously predictable tale.

A Gothic fairytale triumph perfect for the haunting season.

Cinder House is available now – you can order your copy on Bookshop.org