The Skeleton House (Katherine Allum, Fremantle)

The Skeleton House is a powerful and riveting literary debut, delving into themes of motherhood, coercive control, and life within a remote and rigid society. Meg’s life, like that of many mid-20s women in her Mormon community in Nevada, seems straightforward on the surface. Despite not being Mormon herself, she feels the pressure to be and act a certain way, including as the dutiful wife and mother her husband Kyle expects her to be. As the walls of her marriage come slowly crumbling down, Meg is forced to confront her past and the decisions that led her to this point. In this ‘coming-of-self’ narrative, Allum explores a mother’s striving for autonomy and independence in a raw and uncomplicated way. Meg has been forced to grow up prematurely, thrust into a life she’s desperate to change. While Meg’s internal monologue is well-crafted, some sections of dialogue, which flow from Meg’s interiority rather than being presented traditionally with quotation marks, may confuse the reader, and I did not find the use of shifting perspectives achieved much beyond the playful. Despite this, and some buried threads, Allum’s vignette-like scenes flow nicely, advancing the plot and keeping pace. The Skeleton House is a story brimming with tension, desperation and heartbreak, told with a poetic assuredness. Allum is an exciting new literary voice.

Books+Publishing reviewer: Annika Tague is a freelance literary editor, book reviewer and content writer. Books+Publishing is Australia’s number-one source of pre-publication book reviews.

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