The Secrets of Heap House (Iremonger Trilogy, Book I)

Original language: English

Original title: Heap House

Year of publication: 2013

Translation: Lucia Barahona Lorenzo

Valuation: More than recommended

We put in a shaker a good splash of Dickensian narrative with an aftertaste of dystopia steampunka measure of Georges Perec and a half of Harry Potter. A couple of splashes of Gerald Durrell and Roald Dahl (a little more of this, if you like). A few drops of Michael Ende and a horror novel distillate, to give it aroma (I’m referring to Grady Hendrix, you don’t have to go overboard and put, for example, King). Shake everything well (or mix it, I don’t know, I’m not James Bond either…) and then soak it well with Downton Abbey or the oldest Up and down a lump of Wodehouse to crumble into the mixture. Serve the cocktail in a long glass, garnished with a Tim Burton peel to give it color (black, in this case) and a couple of cherries: one of teenage love and the other of social criticism. Savor with delight but without too much delay, because this cocktail cannot be drunk alone, but rather accompanied by two others. Of course, enjoyment for whoever drinks it is guaranteed…

Anyway, I would almost leave the review here, but I understand that it can be difficult to understand what it is about so much nonsense choose this way of doing it. So, for all of you, faithful readers of ULAD, here is the mandatory summary summary: The Heap House of the title and where this novel takes place is an immense Victorian mansion – not in vain are we in 1875 – located in an even much larger immense expanse covered in waste, Iremonger Park, on the outskirts of always jubilant London. Almost the entire Iremonger family lives there, having built their fortune from the humble job of scrap metal dealers of their distant ancestors, taking over the waste from the nearby but at the same time distant metropolis. Because almost none of the Iremonger leave the mansion in their entire lives, where those who consider themselves pure blood – pure Iremonger blood, it is understood, since they have the habit of marrying cousins ​​- live with all kinds of comforts, attended by an innumerable army of servants and maids, also relatives, but more distant. The division between the two castes, who live respectively at the top and bottom of the great mansion seems unbreakable. until the orphan Lucy Tennan arrives to serve as a maid.unwilling to accept the rules without further ado. And that finds its reflection in the insecure Clod Iremonger, a young member of the most select of the family who lives with the torment, since birth, of being able to hear what objects say… Something extremely uncomfortable and even disturbing in that house, not only because it stands in the middle of an extensive garbage dump – in fact, the mansion itself is made up of parts of other buildings, collected here and there – but because in that peculiar family, each new member is assigned a personal object. from which they cannot be separated never; Clod’s, for example, is a universal bathtub stopper. The objects are to a large extentas can be seen, the soul, the marrow of this book; My applause, by the way, to the translator, who I suspect must have had to consult countless dictionaries to be able to offer us the correct nomenclature for such varied tools.

With all this that I have said, I think it is enough to encourage anyone to read this novel. But you can also find an endless number of peculiar characters, labyrinthine spaces, unusual dangers, adventures and romance… Perhaps someone might be put off by the appearance of a young adult novel that it has, but, in my opinion, it is not or not only (because it can also turn out, without a doubt, to be a great young adult novel); In any case, I guarantee, as I have explained before, that it is a totally enjoyable book. Its only drawback: that we are facing the first part of a trilogy. Right now I’m burning to read the other two…

Final note: I forgot to mention that in the book there are many illustrations, especially portraits of many characters, made by the author of the novel himself. Quite a plus, I think.