JKJulia Kelly

1. Article · Aug 8, 2026 · Julia Kelly

   Solace House: Unsettling, ambitious novel that blends Gothic unease with cosmic horror (opens the original)

   Excerpt · English

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   There is something appealingly unsettling about houses that hold the traces of lives long gone. In Will Maclean’s Solace House, a decaying Victorian mansion becomes the focal point of a novel that blends Gothic unease with cosmic horror, using its haunted spaces to explore grief, obsession and the fragile boundary between reality and imagination. It’s the summer of 1993 and university student Alex Lane has nowhere to go after term ends. Broke and estranged from his family following an unspec

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2. Article · Jul 4, 2026 · Julia Kelly

   Nuala O’Faolain: Are You Somebody? Honesty that’s compelling and at times unsettling (opens the original)

   Excerpt · Neutral tone · English

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   Nuala O’Faolain’s Are You Somebody? remains as raw and relevant as it did when I first read it 20 years ago. As Katriona O’Sullivan writes in the foreword to this 30th-anniversary edition, its excellence lies in “its capacity to describe the true experience of a woman grappling with who she is, and what she is not”. That struggle gives the book its force. O’Faolain writes with rare openness and brutal honesty. She is committed to telling the truth, even when it exposes her as angry,

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