A House Named Valentine by debut Scottish author Kaci O’Meara is a brief, enjoyable throwback to Victorian-period Gothic literature, with a contemporary spin on early-modern psychological Gothic writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. In O’Meara’s own words, “If you loved works like The Yellow Wallpaper with the aesthetics of Crimson Peak, this book is for you!”

Set in late 19th-century Scotland, Valentine follows Charlotte Rowan, a devoted wife and mother, as she and her husband Andrew move to a new home after his affair. Riddled with insecurities following Andrew’s adultery and with her children living with family in the Highlands, Charlotte succumbs to a spiralling form of depression in her isolation. Charlotte latches onto the house as her only source of comfort, and when she learns it was called ‘Valentine’, it seems to exert an irresistible allure over her.

By the time her children arrive at their new home, Charlotte’s compulsion to remain with Valentine has become an obsession, and as events build towards fatal ends, it is no longer clear if Charlotte’s distortion of reality stems from grief, isolation and betrayal or if Valentine’s influence is supernatural in nature.

At its heart, Valentine is a love-letter to Victorian-period Gothic literature which wears its influences openly: the archetypal plot of a woman’s unravelling psyche, a potentially supernatural entity, intrigue, violence and even “Charlotte’s name coming directly from Perkins Gilman herself,” O’Meara admits. While Valentine’s plot draws heavily from these influences, O’Meara doesn’t merely imitate them but injects the genre with modern social concerns, making it more than just a celebratory pastiche.

Valentine addresses themes like domestic abuse and offers a refreshingly distinct post-pandemic/lockdown take on isolation and reclusion, which “shines a light on what being extremely isolated and neglected while silently struggling with mental health problems can do to the human mind.”

Emphasising some of the more ‘Gothic’ elements from its inspirations, Valentine elicits a pleasurable amount of discomfort while telling a more psychologically grounded story about insanity, mistreatment and abuse, whose beautifully poetic language keeps it compelling throughout its well-paced narrative.

“One thing I was conscious of from the beginning,” O’Meara said, “was that I did not want to portray Charlotte as ‘crazy.’ What she feels, though extreme, is not unfounded.”

Throughout the story, O’Meara’s evocative and poetic writing style manages to achieve a great balance between a tense, claustrophobic atmosphere and the inherently melodramatic emotionality of its Gothic inspirations, with more nuanced understandings of modern psychology. As a result, Charlotte’s descent into madness feels substantially more grounded and, worryingly, relatable after the shared experience of lockdowns in 2020.

Unlike other stories inspired by Victorian Gothic tales, O’Meara’s use of Victorian dialect is a praiseworthy aspect of the novella. Rather than retroactively speaking “modern-day personal insecurities like negative body image and disordered eating into a time period where these issues would be expressed quite differently”, she instead emphasises them in a way that rarely strains the story’s historical setting. Consequently, the story allows modern readers to maintain the suspension of disbelief necessary to engross themself in such a quintessentially Victorian Gothic tale while simultaneously providing multiple interpretations.

An interesting but subtle aspect of Valentine was its acknowledgment of Scotland’s influence on the Victorian period of the Gothic genre, made famous by works like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Rather than acknowledging this legacy, however, O’Meara pays respect to the Scots dialect itself, naturally lacing phrases into the story and paying homage to other Scottish writers, such as her decision to name the house Valentine, named after Carol Ann Duffy’s poem of the same name.

Ultimately, A House Named Valentine is an enjoyable throwback. Its stimulating exploration of current social concerns breathes some fresh life into the decrepit and dusty corners of the haunted house that is Victorian Gothic literature. As O’Meara’s first complete work, it is a highly promising indicator of what her “signature brand of hard-hitting emotional damage with just a wee sprinkle of weird” portends for her future career as a Gothic writer.

O’Meara is hosting a book launch to celebrate the release on the 9th of September in Glasgow. To buy A House Named Valentine and keep up to date with Kaci’s projects, click here.

Featured Image Credit: Kaci O’Meara / ‘A House Named Valentine‘