The Visitors

Catherine Burns

Sep 2017 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

With the smart suspense of Emma Donoghue’s Room and the atmospheric claustrophobia of Grey Gardens, this “bizarrely unsettling, yet compulsively readable” (Iain Reid, internationally bestselling author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things) thriller explores the twisted realities that can lurk beneath even the most serene of surfaces.

What becomes of a child who grows up without love?

Marion Zetland lives with her domineering older brother John in a crumbling mansion on the edge of a northern seaside resort. A timid spinster in her fifties who still sleeps with teddy bears, Marion does her best to live by John’s rules, even if it means turning a blind eye to the noises she hears coming from behind the cellar door...and to the women’s laundry in the hamper that isn’t hers. For years, she’s buried the signs of John’s devastating secret into the deep recesses of her mind—until the day John is crippled by a heart attack, and Marion becomes the only one whose shoulders are fit to bear his secret.

Forced to go down to the cellar and face what her brother has kept hidden, Marion discovers more about herself than she ever thought possible. As the truth is slowly unraveled, we finally begin to understand: maybe John isn’t the only one with a dark side....

Ratings and reviews

This book was not at all what I expected. Just from the blurb, I pretty well figured out who the visitors were, but this book really isn't about them. The visitors are minor characters at best, and more a nuisance to Marion than anything else. As far as her dark side, that's evident from early in the story, which does nothing to build up any kind of mystery or suspense. The only mystery here is whether these horrible people will face any form of justice. As far as characters go, I didn't find a single likable character in this book. Even the "visitors" don't elicit much empathy as we get so little about them. The story is dark and psychological, but it is extremely convoluted and more of a character study of Marion than anything else. We get numerous flashbacks of Marion's life, but they are in no particular order and some are tedious with the details. Then, we get emails at random that are easy enough to figure out, but again, they are rather random. The worst parts for me were the details of Marion's current every day life, including an almost complete play by play of television programs that she watched. I finally made it to the end and I have to say that after all of that, even the ending was thoroughly unsatisfying.

About the author

Born in Manchester, Catherine Burns is a graduate of Trinity College, University of Cambridge. She worked as a bond trader in London before studying at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography and teaching film theory at the University of Salford. The Visitors is her debut novel.