review of: where i end by sophie white

★★★★★

content warnings: mental illness, abuse (child, domestic, physical, and emotional), body horror, sexual assault, rape, murder, death, pregnancy, bullying, stalking, blood, vomit, excrement, toxic relationships, injury detail, and child death.

plot summary:

where i end is the debut horror novel by irish author sophie white. i sincerely hope this is not her last one. mind the content warnings on this one folks, it's a hell of a ride.

this book centres aoileann, a 19-20 year old girl living on a ficitonal island of the coast of ireland. the islanders speak a strange dialect of irish, hate outsiders, never learn to swim despite there being so many fishermen, and think aoileann is a horrible omen. they ostracise her, they assault her, they spit on her and anything of theirs that she touches to ward off bad luck. even her own family, the grandmother that she lives with and the father that works on the mainland and is never around treat her as something to hide, as something that shouldn't be touched. that is, when all of them aren't too busy taking care of aoileann's bed bound and slowly decaying mother. aoileann's mother has been bed bound for years, ever since aoileann was a new born. she doesn't remember anything of her mother from before and has taken to calling her the bed-thing. aoileann and her grandmother take care of her, though both of them despise the woman and the way their lives have become centered around tending to her. her father, when he does visit, likes to pretend that her mother is healthier and better taken care of than she truly is and both aoileann and her grandmother humour him on his visits.

aoileann's monotonous routine is disrupted when a musuem is set to open up in the old factory on the island, a last ditch effort by the mainlanders to create a tourism industry on the island and create profit, much to the chargrin of the islanders. her grandmother is invited to work there and aoileann is expected to take over sole care of her mother throughout the day. when one day she takes a brief walk to the beach for a swim (yet another strike against her in the islanders' eyes), she meets rachel and her baby seamus, mainlanders who have moved to the island temporarily so that rachel can create art pieces to be displayed in the musuem. rachel is everything that aoileann has always wanted. rachel is kind to her, full of life, and so unlike the gaunt islanders. aoileann quickly grows to obsess over rachel, as well as growing to resent the baby that takes up so much of her time. as aoileann's mental state slowly deteriorates she also becomes closer with rachel, manipulating her way into her life through stalking, lying, exploiting rachel's exhaustion with new motherhood, and poisoning of her son.

mixing with all that is the messages that her mother appears to be trying to give her, telling aoileann of the pain that she yearns for in atonement of both what she'd done and the fact that aoileann is alive because of her. aoileann, already unstable, takes this as go ahead to finally take out her hatred on her mother. life goes on like that, aoileann 'takes care' of her mother by day and by night rachel allows her to mind seamus as she rests, unknowing of the salt water her son is being fed to keep him sickly. eventually, her father tells her of the personal tragedy that caused her mother to go catatonic and that marked her as a bad omen for life. when her grandmother learns of how much time she is spending with rachel, she is furious but aoileann is past the point of caring. at the musuem open day, rachel's second to last day on the island, aoileann's grandmother approaches rachel, ranting about aoileann and warning her off of spending time with her, rachel is horrified. horrified to learn that aoileann is living in an abusive home with an unstable grandmother, that is. rachel ends up asking aoileann to leave the island with her, offering to let her live with her until she can get back on her feet (though aoileann has no intention of leaving even then). she happily goes home to gloat to her grandmother and finally, the next day, hours before leaving for the mainland, aoileann ties a rope around her mother's stomach, drags her to a cliff, and leaves her there to hang as is traditional to do with corpses there. though her mother isn't dead yet, aoileann is comforted by the fact that her mother will surely enjoy her slow and painful death. as she merrily skips off to pack, she is soothed by the fact that it's finally over, the misery that has consumed her family is finally gone for good.

my thoughts:

this book was gross to read, it made me very uncomfortable at certain points. that doesn't mean that it wasn't an amazing book, quite the opposite. this book was fantastic, as a horror book it definately achieed its goals, having left me with a pit in my stomach and nausea. i read through the entirety of the second half of this book in one sitting, i just couldn't look away from the flaming car crash that i was witnessing. it was a 5 star read in my opinion and i highly recommend it, as long as none of the warnings bother you.

aoileann is such a fascinating character who's very exsistence is meant to raise questions of nature vs. nurture. everyone around her is convinced that she's evil and a terrible omen and while she does prove them right and proves to them that it was in her nature all along and their treatment of her was justified, can her actions really be solely blamed on her character? she has spent her life abused and ostracised and that had a massive impact on her and how she expects to be treated, is it really that strange that she latched onto rachel, the one person to treat her with basic decency, so hard? she was told her whole life that she is monstrous, it shouldn't come as a suprise that she eventually is nurtured into a monster. her actions throughout the story are reprehensible but i still couldn't help but sympathise with her. she has spent her life as the outcast, the daughter of a filthy mainlander, the bad omen, the one who's sister and mother supposedly drowned while she didn't, i can't help but feel sorry for her and the life that she never got to live due to the traditions and superstitions that labelled her as something undesirable and inhuman. despite the horrors she inflicts on others, i can't help but think of all the horrors that were inflicted on her when she was a child.

the themes of this story are fairly compelling. it discusses themes of nature vs. nurture, mental illness, tradition and culture's impact on people, and motherhood. these are all pretty obvious themes but i also think that this story has themes of generational trauma and the cycles of abuse. the way the themes are all explored is fantastic, in my opinion. like, aoileann's mother and rachel are cast as contrasts to each other for the whole book and that really helps push the theme of motherhood. both of them were new moms who were struggling but the ways that they handle their situations are wildly different. the book knows what it wants to explore and talk about and it doesn't shy away from that or change its mind halfway through which i really appreciate!

overall, i think this book is a fantastic book full of interesting characters, an excellent atmosphere and environment, and a very ivocative writing style. the book's purpose is to make you question things and to freak you out and it does its job very well. i highly recommened this book to anyone who is fine with all the content warnings because it really affected me. reading this was such a memorable experience, the shock i felt during the first aoileann suckling at rachel scene had me shaken for ages. the ending did not leave my mind for days. this is such an amazing book and i really hope the author writes more in this genre sometime soon. and i'm not just saying that for irish solidarity, i really do mean it! :D