The Dumb House

The novel relates a highly elaborate experiment carried out by an insane genius: whether language is innately acquired, or whether it is a product of environment and conditioning. The protagonist (who is unnamed) proceeds to murder a vagrant girl he shelters, preparatory to kidnapping her two children (of whom he, incidentally, is the father) and imprisoning them for years in a secure chamber. Throughout this period, he attends them while totally mute, administering food to them and preventing them from coming into any contact with the outside world in his bid to discover the origin of human communication. However, his experiment takes a turn for the worse, as the two children manage to surprisingly turn the tables on their deranged father, ending with grisly results. This is an unforgettable and deeply fascinating crime thriller.

When I read this book I was taken in by the lyrical quality of the writing, the simple, musical flow of words. The words were in a harmony with the narrative, which flowed on without any contrivance or strain. Burnside has created a character whose actions seem inexplicable, but entirely imaginable. It is the best kind of fiction - that which is out of our everyday experience, but that we can experience with the same vividness as we do everyday life. It was the cool quiet of the narrative voice which endeared me to this book. The ideas which the book expresses are inextricably tied up with the events, but they are at the same time the cause of the events and incidental to them. It is not a lecture in linguistics, but a wonderful story. When I met John Burnside at a reading he was evidently disturbed that he had written such a book. I found this fascinating. It does not have the quality of a nightmare, but of a frighteningly lucid dream, where all of what happens is possible, and very real. The ideas of the novel are old, but not cliched. The novel is not a laboured discussion of the origins of language, but a strange and intriguing description of one man's perverse fascination with language.

I came accross this book in a rather strange way. I was traveling to Monterrey, Mexico departing from the bus station in Nuevo Laredo, when an English couple came up to me and offered me the book, noticing I was the only American, hense the only obvious english speaker of the bunch. I took it and read during my three hour bus ride into metropolitan Monterrey. I was immediately wrapped tightly around the story line, for I hadn't read a book so off the beaten path in as long as I can remember. It's an interesting story to start with, and gets stranger and stranger as the "experiements" with the, better said, HIS children continue. I found myself in the end reading the book simply to find out how it ended. When I did finish it, I was completely surprised, and wished that it would have continued and had some better explanation for the actions of the gentelmen. But it was definately worth the time, and I have recommended it to several people since reading it.

A. L. Kennedy's blurb on the back cover sums up this dark and disturbing book perfectly: "The Dumb House is a wonderfully disturbing book -- chillingly focused and lyrically amoral with moments of remarkable stillness and beauty. A poetic novel in the best and most troubling sense."

This book is special, I have read nothing like it. The world is seen through the eyes of a madman, but somehow everything he does makes sense. There is a logical explanation to everything and soon you start to almost approve of his behaviour, as if nothing is allowed to jeopardize 'The Experiment'...