The best novels where a house is a major character

I’ve loved this book since I was a teenager, but I always feel frustrated and angry at Miss Havisham’s entrapment of Estella and Pip. Central to the story is Satis House, a metaphor for getting stuck in life—its name is very close to Stasis. 

The original end of the novel works much better for me. Pip and Estella meet by chance in the street and part for the last time. The ‘new’ ending has them go off together against a backdrop of burned-down Satis House, thus removing the irony of the book’s title. Although there is the heavy-handed metaphor of the death of the house freeing them, I prefer that it retains its static power and condemns their expectations forever.

This is one of the oddest books I have ever read. It concerns Merricat Blackwood from whose point of view the story is told. Something awful has happened, and the characters go on living after the demolition of a once-comfortable lifestyle. The dysfunctional family harbors secrets, but they hardly matter compared to the setting and the strange characters that seem to grow from the house like fungus.

When I was nine, I came across The Last Battle—the last of the Narnia books. I had no idea what it was and wept and howled at the end, looking frantically for more of the same. I roared through them and was miserable to find C.S. Lewis had died shortly beforehand, as I wanted to write to him and ask him to write more.

I was wholly entranced by Narnia—the endless winter, the Turkish delight, the children living a different, grander, splendid life in a parallel place. But it was the moment in Prince Caspian when they were flipped back from a railway platform to Narnia. Specifically, to ruined Cair Paravel (roll it around your tongue), the gorgeous palace where they had reigned, that enchanted me the most.

Their gradual realization that these ruins were their familiar home (1300 years have passed since they were kings and queens) is so beautifully done. This may be because Lewis based this scene on the emotional pull of derelict cliff-top Dunluce Castle, Co Antrim, near where he stayed as a child with his beloved lost mother.

If you think Georgette Heyer is all sprigged muslin, firm-jawed heroes, forthright heroines, and cod-Austen visits to Bath, think again. This is a bizarre novel, indeed. 

It’s not even one of her "mysteries" like Footsteps in the Dark—fairly straightforward murder stories where something has to be solved. Instead, Penhallow is a house, a seething breeding ground for horrible people intent on doing awful things to each other. 

Each character is drawn in frighteningly frank detail, so you are left in no doubt of their weaknesses and peccadillos. Penhallow is like some kind of disgusting nest, and the manipulative patriarch Adam Penhallow, disabled in some unspecified way, has dragged all the best antiques into the huge drawing room where he infests a vast Tudor bed and holds court every night.

Nearly everyone hates him but can’t break away. He likes to keep his family, illegitimate and otherwise, under his thumb with bribes, secrets, and broken promises. The tension is almost unbearable, and everything implodes. I loved every word.

Susan Howatch walked away from her career as a highly successful novelist some years ago, but she’s well worth a read. Penmarric is the name of another Cornish mansion that is the fixed point in a swirling family saga. She took as her template the lives of the Plantagenet King Henry II and his powerful wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, plus their warring sons, with the house Penmarric standing in for the throne they fought over. You don’t need to know medieval history to enjoy the yarn.

Divided into five sections, each is narrated by a different family member. The action kicks off in 1890 with Mark Castallack clapping eyes on his complicated, older, future wife, Janna, in a churchyard. His mother, Maud, has directed her whole life towards regaining possession of the family estate, left to her cousin Giles instead of her because of primogeniture, and Maud was the wrong sex.

The different sections retell events from alternative points of view. When horrible characters get to tell their own stories, you can see their experience and begin to sympathise. It's all dark, clever, and gripping, and the house looms over everything. It's a shivering, shuddering comfort read.