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When their mother died, teenage Opal faked her way into getting custody of her younger brother, Jasper, and years later Opal and Jasper are still struggling to make ends meet. Jasper is an exceptionally bright and creative boy, and Opal desperately wants to scrape together enough money to send him out of Eden to a fancy private school with all the resources he deserves. Opal has always been mysteriously drawn to Starling House, a big old mansion shrouded in rumor and local legend. When she encounters the house’s reclusive owner, Arthur Starling, she talks her way into the opportunity of a lifetime. Arthur is willing to pay Opal enough money to send Jasper to school; in return, she gets to explore—while cleaning—the house she’s been dying to see for as long as she can remember. Harrow has a gift for turning settings into characters, as she does with both the strangely alive Starling House and the working-class town of Eden.
Starling House (A Reese's Book Club Pick)
"Women's anger is something that had to be shoved into horror, or really only had a place in horror and Gothic, because it was naturally antithetical to the way things were supposed to be," Harrow says. According to town lore, Eleanor murdered her husband and used his money to build the terrifying and strange mansion that haunts them all. The history that comes bubbling up to the surface in "Starling House" is Kentucky's involvement in slavery.
‘Starling House’ Gothic fantasy novel depicts a fictional coal town’s real-life horrors, dark past
Gothic fantasy author Ava Reid says "Starling House" exemplifies what Gothic fiction can offer people struggling with pain and trauma. So I spent a lot of weekends sitting cross-legged on the motel mattress with my little brother, making up haunted house stories until both of us were so thoroughly spooked we’d scream at the sound of a doorknob turning three rooms down. I used to type up the best ones, in the secret hours after midnight, when Jasper was asleep and Mom was out, but I never sent them anywhere.2 I quit all that years ago, anyway. They have money—which generally excuses everything short of homicide—but it doesn’t come from either coal or tobacco, and nobody seems able to marry into it. The Starling family tree is a maddening sprawl of grafted limbs and new shoots, full of out-of-towners and strangers who turned up at the front gates and claimed the Starling name without ever setting foot in Eden itself.
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As Eleanor’s own version of events unfolds, the narrative reveals that Eleanor was the daughter of one of the Gravely brothers, all of whom mistreated her. The beasts of the Underland were created from her dreams and would later cause the deaths of the Gravelys. After a few weeks at Starling House, Opal is approached by a woman named Elizabeth who claims to be helping the local power company, Gravely Power, to research unspecified anomalies connected to the house. In response to Elizabeth’s threats against her safety, Opal is coerced into taking pictures and making notes on the house. The big, churning wheels of this lusciously plotted book begin to quickly turn when Opal takes a job cleaning for Starling House’s current owner, a reclusive young man named Arthur Starling.
If the agreement is not received, the guest should contact the property management company at the number on the booking confirmation. Possibly for the sake of authenticity, Melissa McCarthy (who essays Lilly), was not informed of the sounds the director was going to make, which led to a genuinely surprised reaction from her during the filming of a crucial scene. Melfi also researched the specific bird calls made by starlings so he could mimic them authentically as well. The hilly landscape around Lilly’s home also seems to be from this area, and filming was likely carried out on location in the outskirts of the city. The bird that plays a central role in Lilly’s journey of acceptance and hope is CGI, but to help his actors, the director Theodore Melfi made loud bird calls off-camera during filming. The film, in its entirety, is set in a handful of locations, and filming was likely done on-location (as opposed to a studio) for most of the scenes.
The film follows a couple’s journey as they grapple with the devastating loss of their young daughter. While the husband, Jack, gets committed into a psychiatric institution, his wife Lilly attempts to hold down the fort and maintain their home. However, Lilly, already struggling with her own grief, soon finds herself tormented by a tenacious little bird that keeps attacking her. Poole says that from its very beginnings in the 18th century, Gothic fiction has responded to historical trauma. The only thing she left behind other than The Underland was that house, hidden in the trees.
Opal works hard at Tractor Supply Company to try to save enough money to send her younger brother, Jasper, to a fancy boarding school. Their mother died a mysterious death, their father has never been in the picture and they live in a dingy motel room in the dying town of Eden, Kentucky. Opal is desperate to escape Eden, which offers nothing much besides two Dollar Generals and a strip-mined stretch of riverbank, thanks to the operations of nearby Gravely Power. They started abruptly when I was twelve or thirteen, just when all the characters in my books started manifesting magic powers or receiving coded messages or whatever; of course I was obsessed with them. But Opal, the main character of the book, desperately needs the money to get her brother out of poverty, so she takes a job at Starling House. ‘The Starling’ on Netflix is an emotional drama with a hint of well-timed comedy.
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For Alix E. Harrow, writing 'Starling House' meant telling a new story of Kentucky
The terror of the past often traps characters in Gothic horror stories, Poole adds. If you booked through us and want to leave a review, please sign in first. Booking.com takes your payment on behalf of the property for this reservation. During your stay, you can pay for any extras using Mastercard, Visa and Discover. You need to let the property know what time you'll be arriving in advance.
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There isn’t a lot to do in a town like Eden, and I didn’t have many friends my own age. It’s generally hoped that both they and their house will fall into a sinkhole and rot at the bottom, neither mourned nor remembered, and—perhaps—release the town from its century-long curse. I should be scared—there are stories about Starling House, the kind people only tell at night, half-whispered under the hum of the porch light—but in the dream I don’t hesitate. Starling House is a gorgeously modern gothic fantasy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January. Reading Group Choices selects discussible books and suggests discussion topics for reading groups. "In my family stories, it's magically scrubbed clean of where wealth came from or who worked the land," Harrow says.
She and Arthur individually contemplate Eleanor’s dedication of The Underland, which suggested that her readers should “befriend” the deadly creatures. In an attempt to protect Eden from the beasts, Arthur goes into the Underland. Once there, Opal meets Eleanor Starling herself, who tells Opal the truth about the legends that surround her.
Ultimately, the two return to the real Starling House less haunted by the past and less fearful of the future. Though rumors still circulate around the two residents of Starling House, the town of Eden comes to accept them and begins to grapple with the horrors of its past. Opal also learns that she and Jasper are descended from the Gravelys and that the accident that killed her mother was inadvertently caused by Arthur and the beasts.
"One of the reasons that I had found that difficult to do before is because I find it to be a place of very mixed experiences that I love very, very, very much, and which has just an incredible violence and terror to it." We have more than 70 million property reviews, all from real, verified guests. Please inform Starling Lake House of your expected arrival time in advance. You can use the Special Requests box when booking, or contact the property directly using the contact details in your confirmation. This 9.2 score is from guests who booked this property on several other travel websites. It will be replaced by a Booking.com review score once this property receives its first review from guests on our site.
Opal continues to hear different legends about the Starlings and the Gravelys, including stories about the Gravely family’s history with enslavement and abuse. One night, Opal dreams that Starling House and Arthur are under attack. Rushing to the property, she discovers one of the beasts from The Underland and kills it, then forces Arthur to tell her everything he knows about the house. Arthur tells her that Eleanor Starling believed the Underland and its beasts to be real.
