Catherine House

Starred review from March 2, 2020
Thomas’s spellbinding debut opens in 1996 on Ines Murillo’s first night at a small, highly selective college in the Pennsylvania woods. Drunk after a party, Ines reflects on her relief that behind Catherine House’s locked gates, no one knows about her past. Renowned for controversial research regarding a mysterious elemental substance called plasm, the school holds classes year-round, and students remain confined to Catherine’s rural estate. Eager to disassociate from a past trauma, Ines falls behind on her work while seeking solace in a string of sexual encounters before finding a group of friends who feel closer to family than anything she’s ever known. Still, Ines can’t ignore her growing suspicions about the school’s plasm experimentation in “psychosexual healing,” in which students are subjected to mass hypnosis. Ines’s academic probation leads her to forced isolation in the “Restoration Center,” where a professor places plasm pins in her head and tells her she’ll never think of her past life again. Surreal imagery, spare characterization, and artful, hypnotic prose lend Thomas’s tale a delirious air, but at the book’s core lies a profound portrait of depression and adolescent turmoil. Fans of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History will devour this philosophical fever dream. Agent: Kent Wolf, Friedrich Agency.

March 1, 2020
Students accepted to the mysterious and prestigious Catherine House agree to give up contact with the outside world for three years in exchange for unimaginable power and influence. Ines arrives at Catherine House because she has nowhere else to go. After months spent partying, she has barely graduated high school. "I was staying out late, swallowing magic pills, and laughing so hard I threw up," she recalls. Burdened by a deeply traumatic memory, Ines sees the isolation of Catherine House as a way to insulate herself from the consequences of the real world. But Ines quickly realizes that she doesn't fit in at Catherine House either. She lacks the motivation that drives other Catherine students, like her quiet, focused roommate, Baby, who desperately wants to be accepted to the "new materials" concentration. The highly competitive department attracts the school's best and brightest students as well as the bulk of its funding. But what do new materials students actually study in the laboratories of Catherine House's basement? And why are all students asked to take part in cultlike meditative sessions that seem to bind their identities to the school? Thomas' debut borrows from the grand tradition of the gothic, exchanging ghosts for dubious scientific experimentation and excavating how figures of power and privilege manipulate disadvantaged students to their own benefit. Thomas is at her best when she cracks open the conventions of elite spaces and turns them on their heads. Instead of a whitewashed institution with token diversity, Catherine House brims with sexually fluid teens from all walks of life. And despite Catherine House's reputation, the school crumbles from the inside out. Because Ines has experienced so much trauma, however, she's often disconnected and distant from the characters and events that propel the plot forward. Even her curiosity and ability to explore Catherine's depths are tamped down by depression and fear. This results in muted, lyrical observations about what it feels like to be in "the house...in the woods," but it also means the reader only learns as much as Ines herself can see and process. In the end, we're shut out of the mysteries of Catherine House, too. A promising but uneven debut that walks the line between speculative fiction and ghost story.

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Starred review from April 1, 2020
Welcome to Catherine House, a very different sort of school. Unlike typical four-year colleges or universities, Catherine House offers students an immersive, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Alums of Catherine are uber-famous, uber-rich, and uber-successful, but the inner workings of Catherine House are shrouded in mystery. Nonetheless, there is a cult-like devotion among present and former students. Ines Murillo arrives with no real plan for the future and soon discovers that Catherine House itself will take care of that for her. Cut off from the outside world?no contact with people from her past life is allowed, and photos and other media, with few exceptions, are forbidden inside Catherine's walls?Ines is swallowed up by Catherine's odd syncretic curriculum, its tea tray deliveries in the morning and formal dinners in the evening, and the constant discussion surrounding Catherine's supernatural scholarly claim to fame. For fans of Donna Tartt's The Secret History (1992) and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go (2005), Catherine House is a haunting, atmospheric reflection on the discovery of self and others. At times terrifying, always gorgeously captivating, Thomas' debut is one not to be missed, and perhaps to be revisited frequently.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

May 8, 2020

DEBUT With an abundance of influential graduates, exclusive Catherine House College is well known, but its inner workings remain shrouded in mystery. Not an outstanding student and lacking a stable, supportive family, Ines only applied to the school after being encouraged by her favorite teacher, believing she wouldn't have been accepted. After arriving on campus, Ines finds herself among a diverse group of students with varying academic and social goals, and everyone seems to have a secret, including Ines. With a constant influx of half-told truths and unclear motivations, the tone of the story is dark and discomforting. Adding to the fearful feeling is the use of a closed-off, baroque-style mansion with secluded nooks perfect for a clandestine rendezvous. As Ines, and most of the other characters, reveal small pieces of their stories very slowly, it's difficult for readers to engage fully what is happening. A central mystery surrounds the plasma research conducted at Catherine House, but it doesn't develop much tension, even as portions of inhumane, secret experiments are exposed. VERDICT Readers looking for a strong atmospheric setting in the gothic style will be drawn in by this psychological thriller. Less satisfying are the interesting if underdeveloped characters. [See Prepub Alert, 10/26/19.]--Stacey Hayman, Rocky River P.L., OH

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