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Where I End
Winner of the Shirley Jackson Award, a modern gothic horror where a young woman falls into a dark obsession after a new artist and her baby arrive on her small Irish island.
At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Sometimes in the morning we find her in places. We never see her move. We just come upon her.
Aoileann is cursed. She has no friends, never gone to school. She has never left this windswept craggy isle off the coast of Ireland.
Her mother is a silent wreck Aoileann calls the “bed-thing.� Alongside her grandmother, Aoileann’s days are an endless monotony of feeding, changing, and caring for the bed-thing.
Their island seems cursed, whispering secrets only Aoileann hears. Then Rachel, a vivacious artist from the mainland, arrives with her colicky newborn. Rachel arouses yearnings Aoileann cannot fully comprehend. Soon, the unfolding of her mother’s secret tragedy and Aoileann’s pursuit of her own dark desires are both destined to unleash a maelstrom upon all three of their lives.
Described by New York Times–bestselling author John Connolly as “perhaps the finest Irish horror novel of the 21st century,� Where I End is a modern Irish gothic that will pull readers into its undertow of family resentments and relentless obsession.
At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Sometimes in the morning we find her in places. We never see her move. We just come upon her.
Aoileann is cursed. She has no friends, never gone to school. She has never left this windswept craggy isle off the coast of Ireland.
Her mother is a silent wreck Aoileann calls the “bed-thing.� Alongside her grandmother, Aoileann’s days are an endless monotony of feeding, changing, and caring for the bed-thing.
Their island seems cursed, whispering secrets only Aoileann hears. Then Rachel, a vivacious artist from the mainland, arrives with her colicky newborn. Rachel arouses yearnings Aoileann cannot fully comprehend. Soon, the unfolding of her mother’s secret tragedy and Aoileann’s pursuit of her own dark desires are both destined to unleash a maelstrom upon all three of their lives.
Described by New York Times–bestselling author John Connolly as “perhaps the finest Irish horror novel of the 21st century,� Where I End is a modern Irish gothic that will pull readers into its undertow of family resentments and relentless obsession.
187 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2022
517 people are currently reading
39k people want to read
About the author
Sophie White
26books236followersSophie White is an Irish author, journalist and podcaster. She is the co-host of the podcasts Mother of Pod and The Creep Dive.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 919 reviews
November 3, 2022
A few years ago, when my twins were babies, we used to go for a drive on a Sunday. We'd just flute around for the afternoon, stop at little shops for bags of crisps and ice pops and pull in anywhere that looked interesting or that had a bit of history to it. This one particular day, we ended up at an old building situated next to a graveyard that has some truly awful history attached. Myself and Philip got out of the car, walked over to the front of the building, looked at each other, and I can't remember which of us caught the horrors first, but one of us said "let's get the fuck out of here". It's the most uncomfortable I've ever felt in my life, and my overwhelming thought was DO NOT TAKE THE BABIES OUT OF THE CAR. I couldn't understand how other people were there, walking in and out of the building as if nothing was wrong. Could they not feel it?! Were they not afraid of getting it into their cars with them and taking it home?! I will never, ever go back near that place. It haunted me for days and it makes me uncomfortable even thinking about it.
This book is that feeling in words. It's visceral. It's stomach churning. It's horrifying. It's dread, and damp, and stale, and fusty.
It's also human, and raw, and describes the horror and fear of motherhood better than anything I've ever read.
Aoileann lives on a damp, dark island with her Grandmother and her bed-bound, silent mother. When a young woman with a baby comes to the island, Aoileann is enamoured. How lucky that baby is to have Rachel as a mother, compared to what Aoileann has....
As a long-term Creep�, I thought I had a fairly good on handle on how dark Sophie could go. I greatly underestimated her, and while I really liked her other books, I feel like this is it, this is what she can write better than anyone else. The horror of humanity.
By the time I finished, I wanted to bury it (but I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't have clawed its way up out of the earth and be waiting for me at the back door the next morning when I let the cat in).
Horrifying.
But yeah, definitely one of my favourites of the year 😂
CW for everything
#sharonreadthis #sharonread #whereiend #irishbookstagram
This book is that feeling in words. It's visceral. It's stomach churning. It's horrifying. It's dread, and damp, and stale, and fusty.
It's also human, and raw, and describes the horror and fear of motherhood better than anything I've ever read.
Aoileann lives on a damp, dark island with her Grandmother and her bed-bound, silent mother. When a young woman with a baby comes to the island, Aoileann is enamoured. How lucky that baby is to have Rachel as a mother, compared to what Aoileann has....
As a long-term Creep�, I thought I had a fairly good on handle on how dark Sophie could go. I greatly underestimated her, and while I really liked her other books, I feel like this is it, this is what she can write better than anyone else. The horror of humanity.
By the time I finished, I wanted to bury it (but I'm not entirely sure it wouldn't have clawed its way up out of the earth and be waiting for me at the back door the next morning when I let the cat in).
Horrifying.
But yeah, definitely one of my favourites of the year 😂
CW for everything
#sharonreadthis #sharonread #whereiend #irishbookstagram
October 10, 2024
My Reading Experience: Once I grew accustomed to storytelling style, I finished this book in one sitting. I could not stop reading. I had to know how this story was going to end. Aoileann lives in total isolation on an island off the coast of Ireland. She cares for her mother who is bedridden with some kind of mysterious debilitating condition that has made her body into a horror. The caretaking scenes are repulsive and disturbing.
A woman named Rachel from the mainland shows up on the island with her baby. Aoileann is immediately drawn to her and they become fast friends.
There is an overall sense of dread and sadness that permeates the whole aesthetic of the book. Everything is cloaked in shadow and mystery. The islanders seem strange, something is clearly off about Aoileann, and the situation with the mother and her relationship with her daughter is disturbing, I remember feeling this heavy weight on my heart while I was reading--anticipating the climax--some kind of revelation so I could start piecing this puzzle together.
It happens. The ending does not disappoint.
I'm being ambiguous because the best thing to do is just to encourage others to read it. To experience this story as unfiltered as possible.
Final Recommendation: I'm loving everything coming out of Ireland these days. Claire Keegan, Jess Kidd, Liz Nugent, and now Sophie White. I want to seek out more of White's work and focus some attention on Horror/Gothic/Thrillers from Irish authors, especially Irish women authors.
Comps: Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, I honestly can't think of anything else quite like it. I sort of had some Little Eve by Catriona Ward vibes too
“That's what a baby is, I've come to see now. It is the mother's whole soul extracted, freed from her body and out of her control. It is her entire existence absorbed by this chunk of meat, a jumble of tiny bones and flickering organs. That's what a baby is. A little device with which to torment its mother. A bite of the meat-baby tears at the mother. Dash the little thing against the rocks, throw it away, and the mother ends.�
A woman named Rachel from the mainland shows up on the island with her baby. Aoileann is immediately drawn to her and they become fast friends.
There is an overall sense of dread and sadness that permeates the whole aesthetic of the book. Everything is cloaked in shadow and mystery. The islanders seem strange, something is clearly off about Aoileann, and the situation with the mother and her relationship with her daughter is disturbing, I remember feeling this heavy weight on my heart while I was reading--anticipating the climax--some kind of revelation so I could start piecing this puzzle together.
It happens. The ending does not disappoint.
I'm being ambiguous because the best thing to do is just to encourage others to read it. To experience this story as unfiltered as possible.
Final Recommendation: I'm loving everything coming out of Ireland these days. Claire Keegan, Jess Kidd, Liz Nugent, and now Sophie White. I want to seek out more of White's work and focus some attention on Horror/Gothic/Thrillers from Irish authors, especially Irish women authors.
Comps: Ghost Wall by Sarah Moss, I honestly can't think of anything else quite like it. I sort of had some Little Eve by Catriona Ward vibes too
“That's what a baby is, I've come to see now. It is the mother's whole soul extracted, freed from her body and out of her control. It is her entire existence absorbed by this chunk of meat, a jumble of tiny bones and flickering organs. That's what a baby is. A little device with which to torment its mother. A bite of the meat-baby tears at the mother. Dash the little thing against the rocks, throw it away, and the mother ends.�
September 25, 2024
is an oddly compelling, dark, and disturbing tale of isolation, family, obsession, and the ties that bind. I had a hard time putting this book down while at the same time being a wee bit creeped out by it. The isolation, the shunning, the wetness in the air coupled with the obligation of caring for the "bed thing" makes for a sad existence for Aoileann.
Aoileann lives with her grandmother and her mother who she refers to as the 'bed thing' on an island that she has never left. Her father lives on the mainland and visits once a month. Aoileann wants to belong, to be liked, to have a friend, to be accepted. She has no friends so when she meets Rachel and her new-born baby Seamus on the beach, she becomes obsessed.
This is a dark book which is seeping with atmosphere. The isolated island off the coast of Ireland is a great setting for this dark book. The chill and salt in the air, the home on a cliff, the isolation, and the shunning from their fellow islanders make for a creepy gothic book. There are undercurrents of tension and dread which flow throughout the book. This is a book you don't read but you feel. It is unsettling, eerie, strange, and compelling.
If you are looking for a gothic and dark book, might be right up you alley.
Dark, riveting, hard to put down and gripping.
Thank you to Kensington Books | Erewhon Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at 📖
Aoileann lives with her grandmother and her mother who she refers to as the 'bed thing' on an island that she has never left. Her father lives on the mainland and visits once a month. Aoileann wants to belong, to be liked, to have a friend, to be accepted. She has no friends so when she meets Rachel and her new-born baby Seamus on the beach, she becomes obsessed.
This is a dark book which is seeping with atmosphere. The isolated island off the coast of Ireland is a great setting for this dark book. The chill and salt in the air, the home on a cliff, the isolation, and the shunning from their fellow islanders make for a creepy gothic book. There are undercurrents of tension and dread which flow throughout the book. This is a book you don't read but you feel. It is unsettling, eerie, strange, and compelling.
If you are looking for a gothic and dark book, might be right up you alley.
Dark, riveting, hard to put down and gripping.
Thank you to Kensington Books | Erewhon Books and NetGalley who provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. All the thoughts and opinions are my own.
Read more of my reviews at 📖
September 6, 2024
Holy Hell!!! This book is brutal.
Aoileann lives in house on an Irish island with her vegetative bedridden mother and her stern and unloving grandmother. Her father only visits once a month. She has been kept secluded from everyone. She has never attended school. Her days are always the same. Taking care of her mother. The mother she's never really known because she's always been this way since Aoileann can remember. She hardly even thinks of her as her mother. She refers to her as It or Bed Thing. The care is constant and grueling.
The town treats them as outcasts. Whenever they see Aoileann in town they either ignore her, run away from her, or they spit at her. She doesn't understand why she is treated this way. She doesn't understand why her mother is the way she is. Her father and grandmother won't answer her questions or they speak in riddles only to confuse her more.
One day while doing her daily swim she meets a young mother and her baby. Aoileann becomes obsessed with them. Desperate for a new life, any life that isn't her own, her mind begins to break. She has had enough and will go to very dark places to get what she wants.
Eek! This book is not for the feint of heart. The body horror is harrowing. This is one of those books that I enjoyed but feel weird saying I enjoyed it. You know what I mean? And imagine my surprise when I went to see what else this talented author has written only to find .... rom-coms. Say WHAAATTTT? Talk about a 180. This woman has completely flipped the script from fluff to frightening. What an accomplishment. I haven't read her rom-coms but I would like to encourage her to stick with horror. I will consume whatever horrible thing she writes in the future with glee. 4 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for my complimentary copy.
Aoileann lives in house on an Irish island with her vegetative bedridden mother and her stern and unloving grandmother. Her father only visits once a month. She has been kept secluded from everyone. She has never attended school. Her days are always the same. Taking care of her mother. The mother she's never really known because she's always been this way since Aoileann can remember. She hardly even thinks of her as her mother. She refers to her as It or Bed Thing. The care is constant and grueling.
The town treats them as outcasts. Whenever they see Aoileann in town they either ignore her, run away from her, or they spit at her. She doesn't understand why she is treated this way. She doesn't understand why her mother is the way she is. Her father and grandmother won't answer her questions or they speak in riddles only to confuse her more.
One day while doing her daily swim she meets a young mother and her baby. Aoileann becomes obsessed with them. Desperate for a new life, any life that isn't her own, her mind begins to break. She has had enough and will go to very dark places to get what she wants.
Eek! This book is not for the feint of heart. The body horror is harrowing. This is one of those books that I enjoyed but feel weird saying I enjoyed it. You know what I mean? And imagine my surprise when I went to see what else this talented author has written only to find .... rom-coms. Say WHAAATTTT? Talk about a 180. This woman has completely flipped the script from fluff to frightening. What an accomplishment. I haven't read her rom-coms but I would like to encourage her to stick with horror. I will consume whatever horrible thing she writes in the future with glee. 4 stars!
Thank you to NetGalley and Kensington Books for my complimentary copy.
July 30, 2023
Joint winner of the Shirley Jackson Award for Novels
The morning after I go to Rachel’s house, I feel full of her. I had only drank the tiniest bit of her milk but the shock of the sweetness is still reverberating as I rise to go to the bed-thing.
Where I End by Sophie White is likely to be one of the last books I read in 2022, and is certainly the most viscerally powerful and disturbing.
The novel is published by the wonderful small indy Tramp Press, who have labelled this, her fourth novel, as White's 'literary fiction debut', not without a little controversy (see below from an ).
The novel is narrated by Aoileann, a young girl approaching the age of 20. Her account opens:
My mother. At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Through our thin shared wall, I can hear the makings of my mother gurgle through her body, just like the water in the walls of the house. I hate the sound. In the daytime, it is covered, wrapped up in the radio and the wind and the low hum of the electricity. But at night, in the silence, her insides gush and she seems alive in a way that, during daylight, she does not. The gush forces thoughts of her effluent, her needs; of the things my grandmother takes care of but that I will have to do someday soon. I don’t want to, which makes me feel bad. I hate her body–it’s an awful thing.
Aoileann lives on a small island (One hundred and thirty-four fleshy hearts beat inside fleshy bodies inside toppling stone dwellings) off the coast of the Irish mainland. or Mórthír in the local Irish dialect. This is a grim barren place, whose geography but not character, White has modelled on the real island of Inis Meáin. At one point we learn that the ground was so hard and the soil so thin that burial was impossible, so instead bodies were hung off the high cliffs at the far end of the island to be picked away by the elements:
The tentative priest comes from the mainland once a month to do little more than rearrange his collapsed chairs. The islanders are tolerant of him, but both sides know his visits are for box-ticking alone. The bishop dispatches him to sell their stories, but the islanders know the sea is God. They know that religion is a pathetic performance, a plea for clemency by lost people. The sea laughs at such pleading.
The house in which Aoileann is at the furthest, least accessible, part of the island and its windows have been boarded up with stones. Aoileann lives with her paternal grandmother, an islander, who she calls Móraí, and her mother, originally from the mainland. But no-one on the island knows that her mother is there, believing her to have died around the time Aoileann was born, and she is bed-bound and dumb, seemingly in some form of permanent post-natal depression, and is treated by Aoileann and Móraí as little more than an animal, or perhaps, even worse an object.
Indeed Aoileann typically refers to her as 'the bed-thing' rather than as her mother, and her story sets out in stomach-turning mechanical detail the procedures she and her grandmother go through to keep the 'bed-thing' alive:
I check the position of the thing above the fetid mouth of the loo and then lower it. The toilet receives her like a rancid cradle. Her head and neck meet the cistern first, coming to rest on the damp sod of a pillow we keep there. I continue to lower, the neck remains snapped open, her head hinged back so far she is gazing at the wall behind her. I guide her torso until her body comes to a seated position. I loosen the leg belt and bring it lower so I can pull her knees wide. I wish we could just have her shit in the bath but it is too risky for infections. I hitch the rope back on the cleat so that I can rest for a minute. It’s hard work. For something that looks so decrepit there’s a density to her. There’s a weight to death and even though she is alive, the death is undoubtedly advancing. Just look at her. She is death-logged. Urine falls out of her but nothing more. I give it a few minutes and then, I close my hands around its waist to knead its innards and this works.
Meanwhile Aoileann's father lives on the mainland and visits once a month and while he is aware of his wife's condition Aoileann and her grandmother put on a show that they take better care of her:
Dada is softer than we are. He loves the thing somehow. His memories sustain the love and the thing he sees once a month is tidied up by us, neatened for his consumption. Without it in his eyeline constantly, it is easier for him to recast this thing as a tragic ailing wife and mother. He doesn’t have to look at it every day. It doesn’t hover nearby at all times, ruining his life.
Aoileann has little interaction with the other people on the island who treat her as accursed (The taint is something unique to me, I have learned. The islanders call it scáth suarach anama. Soul-stench), except when sometimes men come across her in a deserted location when they casually rape her, treating her as an object in rather the way she thinks about her mother.
As the story opens, Aoileann is approaching the age when she has been told she will have to assume primary care for her mother, particularly as her grandmother has a new job in a folk museum opened by those from the Mórthír, to attempt to bring some tourism to the island. Aoileann becomes determined to do something to prevent this becoming her life but also is determined to discover exactly what happened to her mother to make her this way, why the islanders view her as accursed, and why 'the bed-thing' has worn its fingers to bloody stumps of bone attempting to scratch messages into the floor.
Another catalyst for the plot comes with the arrival of Rachel, a mainlander on an artist's residency on the island, and with a six-month old baby. Not being aware of the 'soul-stench' around Aoileann she befriends the girl and Aoileann, who although unused to talking with people is highly manipulative, talks Rachel into letting her help with the baby. But Aoileann is more interested in Rachel, regarding the baby with jealousy and, like her mother, as more of an object (the still thing in the cradle), even sampling some of Rachel's milk herself and fantisising about crushing the infant's skull:
That’s what a baby is, I’ve come to see now. It is the mother’s whole soul extracted, freed from her body and out of her control. It is her entire existence absorbed by this chunk of meat, a jumble of tiny bones and flickering organs. That’s what a baby is. A little device with which to torment its mother. A bite of the meat-baby tears at the mother. Dash the little thing against the rocks, throw it away, and the mother ends.
And as Rachel's time to depart from the island nears, and Aoileann father and grandmother find out she has been interacting with Rachel and her child, the story comes to a satisfyingly disturbing conclusion.
Highly recommended but not for the faint-hearted.
.
The morning after I go to Rachel’s house, I feel full of her. I had only drank the tiniest bit of her milk but the shock of the sweetness is still reverberating as I rise to go to the bed-thing.
Where I End by Sophie White is likely to be one of the last books I read in 2022, and is certainly the most viscerally powerful and disturbing.
The novel is published by the wonderful small indy Tramp Press, who have labelled this, her fourth novel, as White's 'literary fiction debut', not without a little controversy (see below from an ).
The novel is narrated by Aoileann, a young girl approaching the age of 20. Her account opens:
My mother. At night, my mother creaks. The house creaks along with her. Through our thin shared wall, I can hear the makings of my mother gurgle through her body, just like the water in the walls of the house. I hate the sound. In the daytime, it is covered, wrapped up in the radio and the wind and the low hum of the electricity. But at night, in the silence, her insides gush and she seems alive in a way that, during daylight, she does not. The gush forces thoughts of her effluent, her needs; of the things my grandmother takes care of but that I will have to do someday soon. I don’t want to, which makes me feel bad. I hate her body–it’s an awful thing.
Aoileann lives on a small island (One hundred and thirty-four fleshy hearts beat inside fleshy bodies inside toppling stone dwellings) off the coast of the Irish mainland. or Mórthír in the local Irish dialect. This is a grim barren place, whose geography but not character, White has modelled on the real island of Inis Meáin. At one point we learn that the ground was so hard and the soil so thin that burial was impossible, so instead bodies were hung off the high cliffs at the far end of the island to be picked away by the elements:
The tentative priest comes from the mainland once a month to do little more than rearrange his collapsed chairs. The islanders are tolerant of him, but both sides know his visits are for box-ticking alone. The bishop dispatches him to sell their stories, but the islanders know the sea is God. They know that religion is a pathetic performance, a plea for clemency by lost people. The sea laughs at such pleading.
The house in which Aoileann is at the furthest, least accessible, part of the island and its windows have been boarded up with stones. Aoileann lives with her paternal grandmother, an islander, who she calls Móraí, and her mother, originally from the mainland. But no-one on the island knows that her mother is there, believing her to have died around the time Aoileann was born, and she is bed-bound and dumb, seemingly in some form of permanent post-natal depression, and is treated by Aoileann and Móraí as little more than an animal, or perhaps, even worse an object.
Indeed Aoileann typically refers to her as 'the bed-thing' rather than as her mother, and her story sets out in stomach-turning mechanical detail the procedures she and her grandmother go through to keep the 'bed-thing' alive:
I check the position of the thing above the fetid mouth of the loo and then lower it. The toilet receives her like a rancid cradle. Her head and neck meet the cistern first, coming to rest on the damp sod of a pillow we keep there. I continue to lower, the neck remains snapped open, her head hinged back so far she is gazing at the wall behind her. I guide her torso until her body comes to a seated position. I loosen the leg belt and bring it lower so I can pull her knees wide. I wish we could just have her shit in the bath but it is too risky for infections. I hitch the rope back on the cleat so that I can rest for a minute. It’s hard work. For something that looks so decrepit there’s a density to her. There’s a weight to death and even though she is alive, the death is undoubtedly advancing. Just look at her. She is death-logged. Urine falls out of her but nothing more. I give it a few minutes and then, I close my hands around its waist to knead its innards and this works.
Meanwhile Aoileann's father lives on the mainland and visits once a month and while he is aware of his wife's condition Aoileann and her grandmother put on a show that they take better care of her:
Dada is softer than we are. He loves the thing somehow. His memories sustain the love and the thing he sees once a month is tidied up by us, neatened for his consumption. Without it in his eyeline constantly, it is easier for him to recast this thing as a tragic ailing wife and mother. He doesn’t have to look at it every day. It doesn’t hover nearby at all times, ruining his life.
Aoileann has little interaction with the other people on the island who treat her as accursed (The taint is something unique to me, I have learned. The islanders call it scáth suarach anama. Soul-stench), except when sometimes men come across her in a deserted location when they casually rape her, treating her as an object in rather the way she thinks about her mother.
As the story opens, Aoileann is approaching the age when she has been told she will have to assume primary care for her mother, particularly as her grandmother has a new job in a folk museum opened by those from the Mórthír, to attempt to bring some tourism to the island. Aoileann becomes determined to do something to prevent this becoming her life but also is determined to discover exactly what happened to her mother to make her this way, why the islanders view her as accursed, and why 'the bed-thing' has worn its fingers to bloody stumps of bone attempting to scratch messages into the floor.
Another catalyst for the plot comes with the arrival of Rachel, a mainlander on an artist's residency on the island, and with a six-month old baby. Not being aware of the 'soul-stench' around Aoileann she befriends the girl and Aoileann, who although unused to talking with people is highly manipulative, talks Rachel into letting her help with the baby. But Aoileann is more interested in Rachel, regarding the baby with jealousy and, like her mother, as more of an object (the still thing in the cradle), even sampling some of Rachel's milk herself and fantisising about crushing the infant's skull:
That’s what a baby is, I’ve come to see now. It is the mother’s whole soul extracted, freed from her body and out of her control. It is her entire existence absorbed by this chunk of meat, a jumble of tiny bones and flickering organs. That’s what a baby is. A little device with which to torment its mother. A bite of the meat-baby tears at the mother. Dash the little thing against the rocks, throw it away, and the mother ends.
And as Rachel's time to depart from the island nears, and Aoileann father and grandmother find out she has been interacting with Rachel and her child, the story comes to a satisfyingly disturbing conclusion.
Highly recommended but not for the faint-hearted.
.
Where I End is a departure from White’s previous novels in terms of style. Filter This (2019), Unfiltered (2020) and The Snag List (2022) are what she refers to as romcoms, or chick lit � “a phrase I have no issue with [though] I can understand how older writers in that genre do, because they obviously worked very hard to elevate perceptions�.
This fourth novel, meanwhile, is touted as her “literary fiction debut�.
“I didn’t approach Where I End as: this will be my literary fiction debut. But I’m very happy that they’ve decided it is because I love literary fiction. I read as much literary fiction as commercial fiction. I don’t differentiate. I don’t think a lot of readers do.�
September 14, 2024
An uneven tale of fear and loathing on a remote Irish island. Sophie White’s novel’s narrated by 19-year-old Aoileann who lives with her grandmother and mother in relative isolation. Her mother appears completely shut down, physically she's totally reliant on Aoileann and Aoileann’s forbidding grandmother. Aoileann’s consumed by resentment and disgust. Feelings intensified by visceral hatred of interacting with her mother’s body: seeping fluids; rotting sores; tasks like hoisting her from bed to bathroom. It’s a deep-seated repulsion highlighted by Aoileann’s insistence on referring to her mother as ‘the bedthing.�
Aoileann’s never left the island, never been to school, her days consist of rituals of ‘caring� overseen by her grandmother. The other islanders seem to view Aoileann as a cross between scapegoat and cursed thing: although the island boys are happy to sexually abuse her whenever the opportunity arises. Dwindling tourist trade leads to investment in a new museum, bringing artist Rachel, with newborn Seamus in tow, to the island. She’s been hired to produce artworks for its opening. Exhausted but expansive, Rachel captures Aoileann’s imagination: ‘the bedthing� equals desiccation and her grandmother unyielding stone but Rachel somehow embodies abundance, undreamt of possibilities. Aoileann’s interest in Rachel rapidly morphs into obsession sparking a chain of grisly events.
Sophie White’s short novel’s been hailed as Irish gothic blended with gory, read-it-if-you-dare, body horror � and more than a dash of folk horror. But for a variety of reasons, it left me cold. There are numerous unsettling, even macabre, scenes and White’s undoubtedly a skilled prose writer. Her portrayal of the island itself is strikingly atmospheric, modelled on the landscapes of Inis Meáin; and I enjoyed her depictions of its eerie history and sinister local customs. White touches too on an array of weighty themes: from families as sites of trauma to the all-encompassing exhaustion of motherhood to emotional ambivalence and the ways in which women’s identities can be subsumed by caregiving � Aoileann’s father visits monthly leaving the heavy-duty work to daughter and grandmother.
But despite the slender mystery propelling the plot, much of the narrative rests on Aoileann’s character. At first, I found her fascinating, strange, otherworldly, yet sympathetic. But as her behaviour became more brutal, she started to feel a bit too stock, yet another in a long line of cruel, murderous women � the kind frequently found lurking in highly-manipulative, commercial crime fiction. It’s revealed, for instance, that Aoileann’s childhood was punctuated by grotesque acts, she revelled in torturing and slaughtering small animals; displaying traits that mark her out, at least in popular culture, as a serial killer in the making. In case that’s not sufficiently clear, White even slips in a line from an interview with the notorious Ed Gein to underline it. For me, the story eventually tipped over into lurid melodrama, and its problematic elements became increasingly difficult to overlook � from representations of disability to Aoileann’s growing, albeit unintentional, resemblance to stereotypical monstrous queer. I can see why White’s award-winning novel might appeal to a variety of readers but it just wasn’t the right fit for me.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Erewhon Books for an ARC
Aoileann’s never left the island, never been to school, her days consist of rituals of ‘caring� overseen by her grandmother. The other islanders seem to view Aoileann as a cross between scapegoat and cursed thing: although the island boys are happy to sexually abuse her whenever the opportunity arises. Dwindling tourist trade leads to investment in a new museum, bringing artist Rachel, with newborn Seamus in tow, to the island. She’s been hired to produce artworks for its opening. Exhausted but expansive, Rachel captures Aoileann’s imagination: ‘the bedthing� equals desiccation and her grandmother unyielding stone but Rachel somehow embodies abundance, undreamt of possibilities. Aoileann’s interest in Rachel rapidly morphs into obsession sparking a chain of grisly events.
Sophie White’s short novel’s been hailed as Irish gothic blended with gory, read-it-if-you-dare, body horror � and more than a dash of folk horror. But for a variety of reasons, it left me cold. There are numerous unsettling, even macabre, scenes and White’s undoubtedly a skilled prose writer. Her portrayal of the island itself is strikingly atmospheric, modelled on the landscapes of Inis Meáin; and I enjoyed her depictions of its eerie history and sinister local customs. White touches too on an array of weighty themes: from families as sites of trauma to the all-encompassing exhaustion of motherhood to emotional ambivalence and the ways in which women’s identities can be subsumed by caregiving � Aoileann’s father visits monthly leaving the heavy-duty work to daughter and grandmother.
But despite the slender mystery propelling the plot, much of the narrative rests on Aoileann’s character. At first, I found her fascinating, strange, otherworldly, yet sympathetic. But as her behaviour became more brutal, she started to feel a bit too stock, yet another in a long line of cruel, murderous women � the kind frequently found lurking in highly-manipulative, commercial crime fiction. It’s revealed, for instance, that Aoileann’s childhood was punctuated by grotesque acts, she revelled in torturing and slaughtering small animals; displaying traits that mark her out, at least in popular culture, as a serial killer in the making. In case that’s not sufficiently clear, White even slips in a line from an interview with the notorious Ed Gein to underline it. For me, the story eventually tipped over into lurid melodrama, and its problematic elements became increasingly difficult to overlook � from representations of disability to Aoileann’s growing, albeit unintentional, resemblance to stereotypical monstrous queer. I can see why White’s award-winning novel might appeal to a variety of readers but it just wasn’t the right fit for me.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Erewhon Books for an ARC
October 20, 2022
This book has made mince meat out of me. Fucking hell. I've never cried in horror at a book before.
Absolutely devastatingly horrific stuff. And that is a compliment. Well done Sophie White 👏
Absolutely devastatingly horrific stuff. And that is a compliment. Well done Sophie White 👏
October 10, 2023
well that’s going to haunt me for the rest of my life
November 7, 2024
This might be the most ableist book I've ever read. It's actually disgusting, and I'm appalled that people aren't talking about it. At all. Like, I scanned many reviews, both positive and negative, looking for a discussion about disability and ableism in this book and I'm just not seeing it.
I mean, this is horror story, but the only thing I found horrific in Sophie White's Where I End is its unseen ableism, which infects every single page. And equally as horrific is the fact that White seems to feel entitled to her ableism.
There's an author's note in the beginning of this book because White just HAD to tell us how this book came to be, and specifically, that this book is "more autobiographical than probably any horror novel should be".
In that author's note, she straight up tells us that this book is, in part, a response to having provided care to her father, who acquired a disability at the end of his life that made him non-communicative and unresponsive. Here's what she had to say about it:
I think I GASPED when I read this. Not just because she referred to her father using such a disrespectful, derogatory term, but also because I've never heard someone so boldly declare how entitled they are to their ableism.
Like... Ms. White, be so fucking for real. This book is 222 pages of hatred and resentment for your father because he had the audacity to need caregiving after acquiring a disability at the end of his life. Girl, get over yourself. You obviously chose your words carefully, and I'm calling you out because your ableism is showing.
And then you act like you're concerned about downplaying what your father "suffered"?? I hate to tell you this, but your own fucking words downplay your father's existence as a human being. Not only that, but your words have already damaged the disability community and will continue to do so until the end of time.
Also, cruel words or euphemisms are not the only options when talking about disability, you dingbat. And the fact that you chose the former to talk about your father is... shameful and embarrassing. Maybe try asking the disability community what their preferences are? Or just stick to factual or scientific terms if you and your ableism don't give a crap to do that.
And to prove my point here even further, not only did Sophie White confess her ableism in her author's note, but she then proceeded to write the most vitriolic and hate-filled depiction of caregiving I've ever encountered. Like, actually insinuating that the person who needs caregiving in this narrative is a literal monster or a curse.
Remember how she said this book was more autobiographical than it should be??? I truly hope her father never knew how she felt about him.
Because the protagonist in this book refers to her uncommunicative and non-responsive mother, who acquired a disability after a boating accident, most often as "the bed-thing" and I 100% believe that was how White saw her father. Remember, she just had to make it clear that he was a "vegetable" (her words, not mine, I would NEVER), not a human being with a disability.
By the way, I probably wouldn't have been so upset at the ableism here if the author hadn't included her author's note in an attempt, it seems to me, to justify her ableism.
I mean, I get it. I was a caregiver professionally for 16 years and I also watched my father become disabled and eventually die from cancer when I was a teen. I get feeling hopeless, frustrated, angry, resentful, and even disgusted with the aspects of caregiving, especially for a parent. Those feelings are totally valid. And writing a horror story about it is a good way to dissect and explore those feelings.
As an avid horror reader, I like to read depictions of problematic things for this reason. There is no safer space imho for talking about some of the most horrible things in this world than the horror genre. But you HAVE to acknowledge those problematic things as problems.
Cause here's the thing. This book doesn't talk about disability like it's a disability. You know, something to be managed and accommodated. It talks about disability like it's a monster, a thing that gurgles at night, a thing that should be feared and kept hidden.
And people aren't even realizing it.
This book isn't calling out the ableist feelings of the protagonist as the problem here. It's saying the disability depicted here is the problem. And I know this because the author just HAD to tell me about it with her very carefully chosen words. And that, my friends, is ableism at its finest.
So readers, check your ableism right here and right now. Don't be a Sophie White. Don't use derogatory terms to describe disability. Don't refer to people with disabilities as if they are sad and suffering and better off dead. Don't depict their caregivers as abusive, neglectful, mean-spirited, selfish people.
And lastly, I can't believe I even have to say this, don't depict disabled people as monsters. Because *NEWS FLASH* we aren't monsters. And Ms. White, I want you to know, neither was your father.
Not acknowledging disability in a story about a woman with a significant disability and also saying her condition is monstrous is... just disgusting. And I don't want to spoil the ending, but if you do or have read this book, just take a second to think about what that ending is trying to say about people with disabilities in general.
I rated Sophie White's Where I End 1 out of 5 stars.
This book is getting a lot of praise and I'm just SO sad that nobody is talking about its ableism, which is the real horror if you ask me.
I mean, this is horror story, but the only thing I found horrific in Sophie White's Where I End is its unseen ableism, which infects every single page. And equally as horrific is the fact that White seems to feel entitled to her ableism.
There's an author's note in the beginning of this book because White just HAD to tell us how this book came to be, and specifically, that this book is "more autobiographical than probably any horror novel should be".
In that author's note, she straight up tells us that this book is, in part, a response to having provided care to her father, who acquired a disability at the end of his life that made him non-communicative and unresponsive. Here's what she had to say about it:
Before he died, my father was a vegetable for three years. I'm sorry for the cruel language. But sometimes I think euphemisms do a disservice to experiences-- in this case employing something gentler would downplay what he suffered, and what we suffered as his family living through his unliving.
I think I GASPED when I read this. Not just because she referred to her father using such a disrespectful, derogatory term, but also because I've never heard someone so boldly declare how entitled they are to their ableism.
Like... Ms. White, be so fucking for real. This book is 222 pages of hatred and resentment for your father because he had the audacity to need caregiving after acquiring a disability at the end of his life. Girl, get over yourself. You obviously chose your words carefully, and I'm calling you out because your ableism is showing.
And then you act like you're concerned about downplaying what your father "suffered"?? I hate to tell you this, but your own fucking words downplay your father's existence as a human being. Not only that, but your words have already damaged the disability community and will continue to do so until the end of time.
Also, cruel words or euphemisms are not the only options when talking about disability, you dingbat. And the fact that you chose the former to talk about your father is... shameful and embarrassing. Maybe try asking the disability community what their preferences are? Or just stick to factual or scientific terms if you and your ableism don't give a crap to do that.
And to prove my point here even further, not only did Sophie White confess her ableism in her author's note, but she then proceeded to write the most vitriolic and hate-filled depiction of caregiving I've ever encountered. Like, actually insinuating that the person who needs caregiving in this narrative is a literal monster or a curse.
Remember how she said this book was more autobiographical than it should be??? I truly hope her father never knew how she felt about him.
Because the protagonist in this book refers to her uncommunicative and non-responsive mother, who acquired a disability after a boating accident, most often as "the bed-thing" and I 100% believe that was how White saw her father. Remember, she just had to make it clear that he was a "vegetable" (her words, not mine, I would NEVER), not a human being with a disability.
By the way, I probably wouldn't have been so upset at the ableism here if the author hadn't included her author's note in an attempt, it seems to me, to justify her ableism.
I mean, I get it. I was a caregiver professionally for 16 years and I also watched my father become disabled and eventually die from cancer when I was a teen. I get feeling hopeless, frustrated, angry, resentful, and even disgusted with the aspects of caregiving, especially for a parent. Those feelings are totally valid. And writing a horror story about it is a good way to dissect and explore those feelings.
As an avid horror reader, I like to read depictions of problematic things for this reason. There is no safer space imho for talking about some of the most horrible things in this world than the horror genre. But you HAVE to acknowledge those problematic things as problems.
Cause here's the thing. This book doesn't talk about disability like it's a disability. You know, something to be managed and accommodated. It talks about disability like it's a monster, a thing that gurgles at night, a thing that should be feared and kept hidden.
And people aren't even realizing it.
This book isn't calling out the ableist feelings of the protagonist as the problem here. It's saying the disability depicted here is the problem. And I know this because the author just HAD to tell me about it with her very carefully chosen words. And that, my friends, is ableism at its finest.
So readers, check your ableism right here and right now. Don't be a Sophie White. Don't use derogatory terms to describe disability. Don't refer to people with disabilities as if they are sad and suffering and better off dead. Don't depict their caregivers as abusive, neglectful, mean-spirited, selfish people.
And lastly, I can't believe I even have to say this, don't depict disabled people as monsters. Because *NEWS FLASH* we aren't monsters. And Ms. White, I want you to know, neither was your father.
Not acknowledging disability in a story about a woman with a significant disability and also saying her condition is monstrous is... just disgusting. And I don't want to spoil the ending, but if you do or have read this book, just take a second to think about what that ending is trying to say about people with disabilities in general.
I rated Sophie White's Where I End 1 out of 5 stars.
This book is getting a lot of praise and I'm just SO sad that nobody is talking about its ableism, which is the real horror if you ask me.
December 3, 2024
EXTREMELY DISTURBING!
If you follow my reviews, you know that I really enjoy dark mysteries, thrillers, and psychological horror novels that include all the trigger warnings.
ܳ�
This book is DEEPLY UNSETTLING.
In this modern Irish gothic horror story, Aoileann is cursed. She lives on an island off the coast of Ireland where no one learns to swim, even though many drown each year. The townspeople have branded her an outcast, taunting and refusing to have any contact with her. She lives in a dilapidated cottage high on a cliff with her grandmother, where her days are spent caring for the secret “bed-thing� - her mother, who is in a vegetative state. Or is she? She hears her moving around and creaking at night. Yet, during the day she must feed, bathe, and toilet her.
When an artist comes to town with her newborn baby, Aoileann is awakened from her monotonous trance. At 19 years old, she is desperate to finally learn what awful thing she did to her mother.
“When I began she ended�
Filled with themes of isolation, family obligations, and secret obsessions, this winner of the Shirley Jackson award is super creepy and deeply atmospheric. The tension is palpable and consistently mounts until the very end. Aoileann’s sad existence of neglect is heartbreaking and is at times very difficult to read. I disagree that this is an LBGTQ novel, as it’s really not about a sexual awakening. Rather, Aoileann seeks acceptance and love from the only person who actually “sees� her.
This is a short novel that ends abruptly. I would have liked to have known how it all turned out for Aoileann after reading about her long, harrowing journey.
Trigger warnings: extreme body horror, child abuse, neglect
4/5 stars
If you follow my reviews, you know that I really enjoy dark mysteries, thrillers, and psychological horror novels that include all the trigger warnings.
ܳ�
This book is DEEPLY UNSETTLING.
In this modern Irish gothic horror story, Aoileann is cursed. She lives on an island off the coast of Ireland where no one learns to swim, even though many drown each year. The townspeople have branded her an outcast, taunting and refusing to have any contact with her. She lives in a dilapidated cottage high on a cliff with her grandmother, where her days are spent caring for the secret “bed-thing� - her mother, who is in a vegetative state. Or is she? She hears her moving around and creaking at night. Yet, during the day she must feed, bathe, and toilet her.
When an artist comes to town with her newborn baby, Aoileann is awakened from her monotonous trance. At 19 years old, she is desperate to finally learn what awful thing she did to her mother.
“When I began she ended�
Filled with themes of isolation, family obligations, and secret obsessions, this winner of the Shirley Jackson award is super creepy and deeply atmospheric. The tension is palpable and consistently mounts until the very end. Aoileann’s sad existence of neglect is heartbreaking and is at times very difficult to read. I disagree that this is an LBGTQ novel, as it’s really not about a sexual awakening. Rather, Aoileann seeks acceptance and love from the only person who actually “sees� her.
This is a short novel that ends abruptly. I would have liked to have known how it all turned out for Aoileann after reading about her long, harrowing journey.
Trigger warnings: extreme body horror, child abuse, neglect
4/5 stars
July 18, 2023
Vile. Sick. Wretched.
Loved it.
Loved it.
November 3, 2024
the body horror, the very end, and the discussions about intention being what makes art constitute as art were my favorite parts. the plot, reveals, and writing style were prob more of a 2 or 3 star for me, however. but it was overall a quick read with super eerie elements & an underlying obsession story, which I always tend to enjoy.
January 22, 2025
"لقد تعلمت أن الأمل قد يكون حبل مشنقة. نضع رؤوسنا بكامل إرادتنا وبمنتهى اللامبالاة في حلقة سادية وننتظر حتى نُشنق."
رواية "حيث أنتهي" هي نوعي المفضل في الرعب؛ الرعب النفسي الصادر عن جميع الشخصيات، مع الإيحاء الدائم بأن هناك عنصر خارق للطبيعة، وكان العنصر هنا هو الجزيرة المزعوم بإنها ملعونة، ولكننا مع تقدم الأحداث نكتشف أن قاطني الجزيرة ملعونين بشكل أكبر، فتمسكهم المتعصب بخرافات تناقلت بينهم كأصنام تُعبد ولا تُهدم، بل وتكبير حجم خوفهم من خلال أفعال غريبة ولامنطقية، كإمتناعهم عن تعلم السباحة لأنهم يظنون إنهم بتلك الفعلة يتحدون البحر! فيغضب عليهم ويُعاقبهم، وأشياء أخرى وتكنهات غريبة ومريبة يقومون بها، فتدمر حيوات غيرهم، فأي شخص قد سبق الحُكم عليه بأنه ملعون، ستصبح حياته لعنة حقيقية حتى لو كانت كل الأسباب التي تبرهن ذلك غير عقلانية، تمسكهم بخرافات ماضيهم تتحكم في أفعال حاضرهم ومستقبلهم، ومن تلك الخرافات أنهم لا يتزاوجون من خارج الجزيرة، وعندما قامت أحد الشخصيات بذلك نبذوها!
تبدأ الأحداث الحقيقية بقدوم "ريتشيل" الفنانة وطفلها الرضيع إلى الجزيرة، فتنشأ علاقة بينها وبين "إييلين"؛ الابنة غريبة الأطوار الملعونة من أبناء جزيرتها، ونحن على دراية بخلفيتها وخلفية عائلتها الغريبة بالطبع، فغرابة الطباع والأحداث تُصافحنا منذ أول صفحات الرواية، هناك جو عام من القلق يغلف كل شيء، حتى الطريقة التي تُدار بها الأزمات، شخصية "الشيء" وطريقة إخفاءه والتعامل اليومي معه، تفاصيل مريعة ومُقززة ومُخيفة تُمهد لشر أكبر، وأحداث أكثر شذوذاً، وقد كان، أنتظر حتى النهاية، وستدهشك بكل تأكيد.
لعبت الكاتبة "صوفي وايت" لعبة ذكية بإيهامنا في أول الأحداث بأن شخصية بعينها تحمل طباع معينة وصدقناها، ولكن بعدما تُكشف كل الأسرار من الماضي، وبعدما نرى بأعيننا أفعالها، ونُذهل ونُدهش من الغرابة، ويُصبح الخوف على الشخصيات الأخرى ملازماً لنا، نتيقن أن ما تم تلويثه لا يُمكن أن يصلح مرة أخرى، ورغم أن النهاية لم تكشف إلا عن جانب واحد من سوداويتها، فقد تُرك لنا أكثر مما قيل لنتخيله، وعلى الأخص بعد التأكد من أفعال بعينها.
ختاماً..
رواية رعب نفسي مجنونة، سردها مليء بالغرابة، ستقلقك وتدهشك وتُقززك، ولكنك لو من مُحبي الرعب النفسي سيزيد تقديرك لها مع التقدم في الصفحات، ورغم حبي لهذه الرواية، فلا استطيع أن أرشحها إلا لمُحبي هذا النوع من الروايات، التي تجعلنا نغوص في أعماق النفس البشرية، وتشعباتها الهائلة وتقلباتها المجنونة، ولك أن تتخيل عزيزي القارئ، أن هذه الرواية المليئة بالرعب النفسي والخوف والقلق تتحدث عن شيء هو النقيض تماماً من ذلك؛ ألا وهو الأمومة! فكرة مجنونة، ولكنها ممتعة، وأدعي بأن تقديري للرواية ظل يرتفع تدريجياً حتى النهاية. لو هناك سلبية تؤخذ على الرواية فهو عدم إشراك شخصيات من الجزيرة غير المعنيين بالأحداث، كالعائلة والفنانة، أو يمكن أن أقول كنت متعطشاً للمزيد من شخصيات هذه الجزيرة الملعونة.
November 29, 2024
Nineteen-year-old Aoileann lives a miserable existence on a remote Irish island. Her days are filled with helping her grandmother care for her profoundly disabled mother, who she loathes, and she is an outcast among her community. When a young mother from the mainland arrives on the island with her baby, Aoileann sees the chance to finally have a friend. But her interest in the newcomer quickly becomes an obsession.
OK, wow, this book was phenomenal. The atmospheric gothic vibes were intense. Think of it as a modern Irish descendant of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Be warned that this book is extremely dark, and I could definitely see it being an upsetting read for some people…but I was absolutely hooked. This is a work of non-supernatural horror and I think it will appeal to fans of horror and literary fiction in equal measure.
OK, wow, this book was phenomenal. The atmospheric gothic vibes were intense. Think of it as a modern Irish descendant of Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Be warned that this book is extremely dark, and I could definitely see it being an upsetting read for some people…but I was absolutely hooked. This is a work of non-supernatural horror and I think it will appeal to fans of horror and literary fiction in equal measure.
October 19, 2024
4.5 stars
A brilliantly written look into the mind of a teenage girl who lives on an isolated island and, along with her grandmother, has to care for her bedbound mother. Secrets from the past are slowly revealed as she tries to rebel from her restricted life. Heads up for some scenes of cruel and disturbing acts towards the vulnerable. I thought the bleakness and unhinged nature of this story was really well done and will certainly stick with me.
A brilliantly written look into the mind of a teenage girl who lives on an isolated island and, along with her grandmother, has to care for her bedbound mother. Secrets from the past are slowly revealed as she tries to rebel from her restricted life. Heads up for some scenes of cruel and disturbing acts towards the vulnerable. I thought the bleakness and unhinged nature of this story was really well done and will certainly stick with me.
November 18, 2022
“A horror story about being bound by the blood knot of family�
..
In my younger days, I was an avid reader of horror stories, and indeed, a viewer of any film with that discernible Yuk! factor. However, age appears to have drastically altered my perspectives and changed my tastes, so today it is a genre I tend to read or watch, sparingly. Likewise, I read novellas only on a very occasional basis, so when Where I End, a horror novella, appeared in my email, the decision to include it in my review schedule was not taken lightly. However, if this is an example of the excellent standard of literary prose, which can be crammed into so few pages, with such amazing results, I might well be persuaded to include more from the genre in my regular reading.
As part of my review, I generally like to offer a short resume of the storyline as I see it, just to whet the appetite for what’s to come. However, to feature even a potted overview of this book, runs the risk of giving away too many spoilers, so I am going to keep this short piece deliberately vague, but believe me when I say that my words barely scratch the surface of this gripping story�
..
On a remote and forbidding island off the coast of Ireland, a small community of fisher folk, most of whom have never learned to swim, live the same hand to mouth existence as they have for countless decades. Visiting tourists stay but a short time and are actively discouraged from doing so, by insular, inbred locals, who communicate in a dialect all their own and have a physical appearance which is unique and very disturbing to behold.
However, even as they are shown prejudice by the mainlanders, they themselves have shown nothing but open distrust and hatred for the mainlander who was brought into their midst as a bride almost twenty years ago, ostracising the entire island family she had joined and particularly the offspring the marriage had produced. The family live apart and remote from their fellow citizens, who neither know nor care what goes on in the back to front house on the edge of the cliff.
In fact, three generations of women eke out an existence in this lonely outpost, visited once a month by a guilt-ridden son, husband and father, who himself now chooses to live on the mainland. His motives for relocating are known only to the two older women, however his daughter Aoileann, is keen to discover his secret, although she may wish she had let sleeping dogs lie when the horrific truth is revealed.
Aoileann’s mother and grandmother exist as emotionally empty human shells, whilst her father is so consumed by self-loathing, having convinced himself that he is the sole victim of this terrible tragedy, that Aoileann has grown up with only the company of the treacherous thoughts which race around in her own mind.
As part of the mainland authority’s decision to try and boost tourism to the island with the addition of a new museum, a visiting artist, Rachel and her new-born baby Seamus, are allocated housing for a few weeks, so that she can prepare an opening exhibition of her work. Immediately Aoileann is smitten with the new mother, although she develops a very unhealthy obsession with her breastfeeding habits and begins to resent Seamus in a disturbing way. Rachel is so consumed by the tiredness of new motherhood and the need to produce her artwork apace, that she completely misses the signs of Aoileann’s conniving, lies and duplicity, which become life threatening as they grow in magnitude.
Once Aoileann has worked out a plan, she decides that she is going to manipulate the situation so that she is able to leave the island with Rachel when she goes � Will she be able to adapt to mainland living, or is her mental health too badly damaged? And will Rachel live (or die) to regret her decision?
..
For me personally, this unconventional, unique, intriguing and oh! so dark storyline, takes edge-of-the-seat thriller writing to a whole new level, especially when I arrived at the section in my reading which I recognised as being the source of inspiration for the book’s eerie cover art.
The actual footprint this story occupies is quite finely focussed, however the narrative surrounding the physical appearance and ‘feeling� of specific locations is wonderfully descriptive, creating excellent enhanced visual awareness, for any confirmed ‘armchair travellers� who are brave enough to visit.
There are many layers to this intriguing, wonderfully textured and immersive storyline, with some unexpectedly intense and highly emotional twists only adding to the deeply insightful, evocative, and utterly unforgettable relationships between Aoileann and her family, and Aoileann and Rachel. The tense and claustrophobic atmosphere, together with some fantastic lugubrious narrative and dialogue, engendered feelings of dread, fear, loathing and yes! even pity, as I was reading. Despite having so few pages, author Sophie White, also managed to explore so many emotionally controversial subjects, from traumatic birth and post-natal depression, to infant mortality and extreme mental health paralysis.
A small and well-defined central cast of characters held sway over this story, with their dour and brooding persona and aura of impending doom. They were all pretty uncompelling, disturbing, loathsome individuals, and not one of them did I have any real empathy with, or sympathy for. Yes! They were definitely given a strong voice with which to tell their story, however it got to the stage where I simply couldn’t trust a single word which came out of any of their mouths! At best they were complex, volatile and unreliable, at their worst they were manipulative, duplicitous and malevolent. Every time I had the slightest urge to feel even slightly sorry for any one of them, within seconds they had said or done something else to have me seething and truly angry with them, all over again. A cast of ‘extras� were alluded to, but thankfully didn’t appear in any important capacity, as I don’t think I could have stood the strain.
Aoileann’s every word, thought and deed, oozed hatred and malignant, malevolent intent. However, this was beautifully balanced and nuanced against some barely discernible and well disguised moments of loss and longing, as she searched for that illusive something she knew she had lost, or maybe never had, knowing it had left her damaged and somehow incomplete, whilst at the same time her awakening femininity saw her trying to disseminate and come to terms with her own sexuality.
They do say that ‘revenge is a dish best served cold�, however Aoileann turned that saying on its head, as for her, revenge was sweet and definitely to be savoured, no matter what the temperature. I definitely never saw that final sting in the tail coming, which knocked me sideways right towards the end of my reading.
What always makes reading such a wonderful experience for me, is that with each and every new book, I am taken on a unique and individual journey, by authors who fire my imagination, stir my emotions and stimulate my senses. This story was definitely one of a kind, having the power to evoke so many feelings, that I’m sure I won’t have felt the same way about it as the last reader, nor the next. Therefore, I can only recommend that you read Where I End for yourself, to see where your journey leads you!
..
In my younger days, I was an avid reader of horror stories, and indeed, a viewer of any film with that discernible Yuk! factor. However, age appears to have drastically altered my perspectives and changed my tastes, so today it is a genre I tend to read or watch, sparingly. Likewise, I read novellas only on a very occasional basis, so when Where I End, a horror novella, appeared in my email, the decision to include it in my review schedule was not taken lightly. However, if this is an example of the excellent standard of literary prose, which can be crammed into so few pages, with such amazing results, I might well be persuaded to include more from the genre in my regular reading.
As part of my review, I generally like to offer a short resume of the storyline as I see it, just to whet the appetite for what’s to come. However, to feature even a potted overview of this book, runs the risk of giving away too many spoilers, so I am going to keep this short piece deliberately vague, but believe me when I say that my words barely scratch the surface of this gripping story�
..
On a remote and forbidding island off the coast of Ireland, a small community of fisher folk, most of whom have never learned to swim, live the same hand to mouth existence as they have for countless decades. Visiting tourists stay but a short time and are actively discouraged from doing so, by insular, inbred locals, who communicate in a dialect all their own and have a physical appearance which is unique and very disturbing to behold.
However, even as they are shown prejudice by the mainlanders, they themselves have shown nothing but open distrust and hatred for the mainlander who was brought into their midst as a bride almost twenty years ago, ostracising the entire island family she had joined and particularly the offspring the marriage had produced. The family live apart and remote from their fellow citizens, who neither know nor care what goes on in the back to front house on the edge of the cliff.
In fact, three generations of women eke out an existence in this lonely outpost, visited once a month by a guilt-ridden son, husband and father, who himself now chooses to live on the mainland. His motives for relocating are known only to the two older women, however his daughter Aoileann, is keen to discover his secret, although she may wish she had let sleeping dogs lie when the horrific truth is revealed.
Aoileann’s mother and grandmother exist as emotionally empty human shells, whilst her father is so consumed by self-loathing, having convinced himself that he is the sole victim of this terrible tragedy, that Aoileann has grown up with only the company of the treacherous thoughts which race around in her own mind.
As part of the mainland authority’s decision to try and boost tourism to the island with the addition of a new museum, a visiting artist, Rachel and her new-born baby Seamus, are allocated housing for a few weeks, so that she can prepare an opening exhibition of her work. Immediately Aoileann is smitten with the new mother, although she develops a very unhealthy obsession with her breastfeeding habits and begins to resent Seamus in a disturbing way. Rachel is so consumed by the tiredness of new motherhood and the need to produce her artwork apace, that she completely misses the signs of Aoileann’s conniving, lies and duplicity, which become life threatening as they grow in magnitude.
Once Aoileann has worked out a plan, she decides that she is going to manipulate the situation so that she is able to leave the island with Rachel when she goes � Will she be able to adapt to mainland living, or is her mental health too badly damaged? And will Rachel live (or die) to regret her decision?
..
For me personally, this unconventional, unique, intriguing and oh! so dark storyline, takes edge-of-the-seat thriller writing to a whole new level, especially when I arrived at the section in my reading which I recognised as being the source of inspiration for the book’s eerie cover art.
The actual footprint this story occupies is quite finely focussed, however the narrative surrounding the physical appearance and ‘feeling� of specific locations is wonderfully descriptive, creating excellent enhanced visual awareness, for any confirmed ‘armchair travellers� who are brave enough to visit.
There are many layers to this intriguing, wonderfully textured and immersive storyline, with some unexpectedly intense and highly emotional twists only adding to the deeply insightful, evocative, and utterly unforgettable relationships between Aoileann and her family, and Aoileann and Rachel. The tense and claustrophobic atmosphere, together with some fantastic lugubrious narrative and dialogue, engendered feelings of dread, fear, loathing and yes! even pity, as I was reading. Despite having so few pages, author Sophie White, also managed to explore so many emotionally controversial subjects, from traumatic birth and post-natal depression, to infant mortality and extreme mental health paralysis.
A small and well-defined central cast of characters held sway over this story, with their dour and brooding persona and aura of impending doom. They were all pretty uncompelling, disturbing, loathsome individuals, and not one of them did I have any real empathy with, or sympathy for. Yes! They were definitely given a strong voice with which to tell their story, however it got to the stage where I simply couldn’t trust a single word which came out of any of their mouths! At best they were complex, volatile and unreliable, at their worst they were manipulative, duplicitous and malevolent. Every time I had the slightest urge to feel even slightly sorry for any one of them, within seconds they had said or done something else to have me seething and truly angry with them, all over again. A cast of ‘extras� were alluded to, but thankfully didn’t appear in any important capacity, as I don’t think I could have stood the strain.
Aoileann’s every word, thought and deed, oozed hatred and malignant, malevolent intent. However, this was beautifully balanced and nuanced against some barely discernible and well disguised moments of loss and longing, as she searched for that illusive something she knew she had lost, or maybe never had, knowing it had left her damaged and somehow incomplete, whilst at the same time her awakening femininity saw her trying to disseminate and come to terms with her own sexuality.
They do say that ‘revenge is a dish best served cold�, however Aoileann turned that saying on its head, as for her, revenge was sweet and definitely to be savoured, no matter what the temperature. I definitely never saw that final sting in the tail coming, which knocked me sideways right towards the end of my reading.
What always makes reading such a wonderful experience for me, is that with each and every new book, I am taken on a unique and individual journey, by authors who fire my imagination, stir my emotions and stimulate my senses. This story was definitely one of a kind, having the power to evoke so many feelings, that I’m sure I won’t have felt the same way about it as the last reader, nor the next. Therefore, I can only recommend that you read Where I End for yourself, to see where your journey leads you!
October 12, 2022
Aoileann lives a cloistered existence. In a ramshackle house near the edge of the island, she lives oppressively - with her grandmother and the bed-thing; the decaying, breathing entity that is also her mother. There is no love there, her mother is a shrivelled husk whose existence is worthless. Meanwhile Aoileann is lost, alone and empty; she’s searching for something but she doesn’t yet know what it is.
So when artist Rachel arrives temporarily on the island with her baby son, Aoileann is entranced. Bewitched by this young woman with leaking breasts & m a kind but exhausted face, their friendship begins, but how will it end?
Crikey o’Reilly this was DARK. It’s surreal, horrific & very shocking but also poignant & pitiful in places. There is no excuse for the life Aoileann has, you can understand why she’s so f*cked up, but my god some of her decisions are difficult to process. And stomach.
That aside this is an exceptionally well crafted offering of horror in everyday shape & form. The wild & isolated island backdrop added enormously to the sense of malevolence pouring from the pages.
Purely by coincidence I’ve just read another horror set in Ireland - The Creeper by A.M.Shine. That was also a brilliant read but together they’ve put me right off visiting Ireland!!
Haunting & brutal, this is a book I’ll be thinking about for a very long time.
So when artist Rachel arrives temporarily on the island with her baby son, Aoileann is entranced. Bewitched by this young woman with leaking breasts & m a kind but exhausted face, their friendship begins, but how will it end?
Crikey o’Reilly this was DARK. It’s surreal, horrific & very shocking but also poignant & pitiful in places. There is no excuse for the life Aoileann has, you can understand why she’s so f*cked up, but my god some of her decisions are difficult to process. And stomach.
That aside this is an exceptionally well crafted offering of horror in everyday shape & form. The wild & isolated island backdrop added enormously to the sense of malevolence pouring from the pages.
Purely by coincidence I’ve just read another horror set in Ireland - The Creeper by A.M.Shine. That was also a brilliant read but together they’ve put me right off visiting Ireland!!
Haunting & brutal, this is a book I’ll be thinking about for a very long time.
May 6, 2024
Holy shit ... what did I just read?! That was the most fucked up, horrifying, subtly hostile, mess-with-your-head thing I've read in a long time.
A nineteen year old girl is raised on an island helping her paternal grandmother care for her extremely ill, bedridden mother. She knows her mother no other way. Just a purely nightmarish burden that requires turning, lifting, feeding, toileting, and bathing day after excruciating day. She doesn't even see her mother as a mother. She dehumanizes her, referring to her as the bed thing and It. She resents It. She loathes It. She tires of It. And as she begins to develop feelings for a visitor she meets at the beach one morning, she begins to experiment with acting out against It while simultaneously uncovering a dark secret that's haunted her for as long as she's been alive.
At first, you think you're just reading a coming of age story about a teenaged girl who's starved for friendship, who's been cooped up her whole life and kind of been forced to grow up too fast. But around the 100 page mark, you realize nope, that's not what you're reading. Because it took a turn I didn't anticipate and just kept getting darker and more messed up the further I read.
Where I End made me PHYSICALLY uncomfortable but I loved it. I'd be afraid to recommend it to people... but I loved it. And if you've read it, you'll understand why.
A nineteen year old girl is raised on an island helping her paternal grandmother care for her extremely ill, bedridden mother. She knows her mother no other way. Just a purely nightmarish burden that requires turning, lifting, feeding, toileting, and bathing day after excruciating day. She doesn't even see her mother as a mother. She dehumanizes her, referring to her as the bed thing and It. She resents It. She loathes It. She tires of It. And as she begins to develop feelings for a visitor she meets at the beach one morning, she begins to experiment with acting out against It while simultaneously uncovering a dark secret that's haunted her for as long as she's been alive.
At first, you think you're just reading a coming of age story about a teenaged girl who's starved for friendship, who's been cooped up her whole life and kind of been forced to grow up too fast. But around the 100 page mark, you realize nope, that's not what you're reading. Because it took a turn I didn't anticipate and just kept getting darker and more messed up the further I read.
Where I End made me PHYSICALLY uncomfortable but I loved it. I'd be afraid to recommend it to people... but I loved it. And if you've read it, you'll understand why.
November 20, 2022
Where I End is Sophie White’s first piece of literary fiction, published last month. I read all the content warnings about this book but nothing could have prepared me for how disturbing it was. Bloody hell!
While I could not describe this book as enjoyable per se, it is unforgettably macabre and brilliantly atmospheric, with some stunning writing. I struggled to put it down and read all 172 pages in two sittings.
During the early chapters, I found myself musing that there were parallels between this book and The Colony by Audrey Magee, with both set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland and featuring a resident artist character. I think they make good companion reads but do steel yourself for some seriously disturbing content.
Aoileann is a young girl who, together with her grandmother, spends her days looking after her mother, a catatonic wreck of a woman who is bedbound and withered. Aoileann’s dad visits occasionally but other than that, nobody visits the isolated house on the bleak island with its vertiginous cliffs and rocky, unforgiving landscape.
When artist Rachel arrives on the island with her young son, Aoileann befriends her and begins to make herself indispensable in Rachel’s life.
The book is brilliantly paced, superbly tense (think Sleeping With the Enemy-tense) and the tale unspools to reach a terrifying climax. I was gripped at the beginning, filled with a sense of foreboding in the middle and rigid with fear for the last part. Holy smoke. Admirable to be able to evoke such feelings of terror in a reader. Wow. 4/5 ⭐️
Please check out the content warnings for this one. Grisly but great.
While I could not describe this book as enjoyable per se, it is unforgettably macabre and brilliantly atmospheric, with some stunning writing. I struggled to put it down and read all 172 pages in two sittings.
During the early chapters, I found myself musing that there were parallels between this book and The Colony by Audrey Magee, with both set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland and featuring a resident artist character. I think they make good companion reads but do steel yourself for some seriously disturbing content.
Aoileann is a young girl who, together with her grandmother, spends her days looking after her mother, a catatonic wreck of a woman who is bedbound and withered. Aoileann’s dad visits occasionally but other than that, nobody visits the isolated house on the bleak island with its vertiginous cliffs and rocky, unforgiving landscape.
When artist Rachel arrives on the island with her young son, Aoileann befriends her and begins to make herself indispensable in Rachel’s life.
The book is brilliantly paced, superbly tense (think Sleeping With the Enemy-tense) and the tale unspools to reach a terrifying climax. I was gripped at the beginning, filled with a sense of foreboding in the middle and rigid with fear for the last part. Holy smoke. Admirable to be able to evoke such feelings of terror in a reader. Wow. 4/5 ⭐️
Please check out the content warnings for this one. Grisly but great.
February 13, 2025
Incredibly vivid and doesn’t hold back on some very taboo topics. I felt bad for the girl at the beginning but at the end, she was a true psychopath with a very sickly obsession for murder, sex, satisfaction, and she would do anything she could to obtain her obsession. This was a very troubling, haunting book. It was very well written, so I did give it 5 star. But for a very mature audience.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 26, 2024
I received this ARC through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
Aoileann, a young woman living in an Irish island with her grandmother and the silent, bed-bound mother she doesn’t know, struggles with her monotonous life, filled with secrecy and resentment. Until a mainlander and her newborn baby appear, and show her a different side of mother/child relationships that Aoileann is desperate for, and will do anything to claim for herself.
I went in expecting to love this book, mostly because of the badass Erewhon Books cover, but it just wasn’t my thing. The overall atmosphere is so oppressive, it seeps out of the writing. The settings are harsh and bleak, the characters ugly and cruel. Aoileann’s mother is described in detail, as is the routine of caring for her, and I mean, her body, the bathing, the taking her to the loo and changing her diaper - everything was so vividly portrayed, I do not recommend reading while you’re eating. There were also things done to people that made me squirm.
And I mean, this is a credit to the author, really! I don’t think this makes it a bad book; it’s just that it was too much for me.
It was definitely an interesting exploration of the uglier side of motherhood, of the pressure on women to not only have children but to love every part of the journey, to ignore every bad feeling; of society’s quickness to judge and condemn instead of offering help; of feeling Othered in your community and even your family; of how “evil� can be made.
June 23, 2024
فتاة،جدة، شخص يسمى “شي� مربوطٍ على الفراش . يسكنوا بداخل جزيرة مجنونة . عنيت بالأساطير و الحكايات. تصطدم بهم قدرا� ، نزيلة جديدة على الجزيرة تدعى “رايتشل� . ما حكاية “الشي� ذلك؟ و لماذا مربوط بتلك الطريقة، و ما قصة تلك المدعوة “رايتشل� ؟
رواية مربكة من الرعب النفسي. أول قراءاتي للأدب الأيرلندي. تسحبك الرواية من صفحاتها الأولى ، ليصبح مقصدك أن تنهيها و تعرف الحكاية كاملا� . أحب أن أشكر المترجمة للاحتفاظ بالنص الأصلي. أشيد ببراعة الكاتبة”صوف� وايت� ، جعلتنا نتوغل بداخل الجزيرة و ما بها من شخصيات، كأنك تراها بارزة.
العمق النفسي لشخصية “إيلين� كتب ببراعة كأنك تشاهد نفسيتها من خلال الميكروسكوب و ما تفتقر من حنان الأمومة . ترى أيضا� اضطرابها ؛ ما تراه و تتخيل من أشياء محفورة فقط في عقلها الباطن "هلاوس" مثل رؤية جلد الرضيع كعجين ثم الثقب الواسع في رأسه .. وهكذا.
مغزى الرواية هو “الأمومة� ، و إنها شيء صعب يستلزم كثير من الصبر ، و إن خل سيصبح الطفل مضطرب و يظل يعاني مدى حياته مثل إيلين .
كنت متوقعة نهاية أخرى و كثير من المفاجأت فيها ، و لكنها وجدتها نهاية مبتورة . أرادت الكاتبة أن تنهي القصة ، و لكن في المجمل أستمتعت بقراءتها . رواية تشدك من الصفحة الأولى لآخرها . أعتقد أن الكاتبة "صوفي".تفوقت في كتابة رعب نفسي بجدارة ، كتابته ليست سهلة لنشعر بالقلق و التوتر أثناء قراءة الرواية .
الرواية موجودة على أبجد و موجودة في المكتبات ؛ دار لغة للنشر و التوزيع .
رواية مربكة من الرعب النفسي. أول قراءاتي للأدب الأيرلندي. تسحبك الرواية من صفحاتها الأولى ، ليصبح مقصدك أن تنهيها و تعرف الحكاية كاملا� . أحب أن أشكر المترجمة للاحتفاظ بالنص الأصلي. أشيد ببراعة الكاتبة”صوف� وايت� ، جعلتنا نتوغل بداخل الجزيرة و ما بها من شخصيات، كأنك تراها بارزة.
العمق النفسي لشخصية “إيلين� كتب ببراعة كأنك تشاهد نفسيتها من خلال الميكروسكوب و ما تفتقر من حنان الأمومة . ترى أيضا� اضطرابها ؛ ما تراه و تتخيل من أشياء محفورة فقط في عقلها الباطن "هلاوس" مثل رؤية جلد الرضيع كعجين ثم الثقب الواسع في رأسه .. وهكذا.
مغزى الرواية هو “الأمومة� ، و إنها شيء صعب يستلزم كثير من الصبر ، و إن خل سيصبح الطفل مضطرب و يظل يعاني مدى حياته مثل إيلين .
كنت متوقعة نهاية أخرى و كثير من المفاجأت فيها ، و لكنها وجدتها نهاية مبتورة . أرادت الكاتبة أن تنهي القصة ، و لكن في المجمل أستمتعت بقراءتها . رواية تشدك من الصفحة الأولى لآخرها . أعتقد أن الكاتبة "صوفي".تفوقت في كتابة رعب نفسي بجدارة ، كتابته ليست سهلة لنشعر بالقلق و التوتر أثناء قراءة الرواية .
الرواية موجودة على أبجد و موجودة في المكتبات ؛ دار لغة للنشر و التوزيع .
April 10, 2024
This is one of those books that creeps in under your skin and lives there. The ambiance is dark and foreboding, and let me tell you, so is this story. Some of the passages of taking care of an ill family member - I literally could not take. I had to skip as the descriptions were so vivid and painful� to the character and me! I still feel like I can hear the howls and echoes of the island from here.. a full two days after I finished the book. The setting was absolutely killer. That kind of isolation plays tricks on your mind. I do have remaining questions. I would love to hear more about the family history that might help clarify the dynamic. I also want to know what happens to our main character next. Highly recommend! Thank you to NetGalley for providing the arc for my honest review.
October 29, 2022
Where I End is an exceptionally unsettling but beautiful tale about the horrors that come in the every day for an isolated and stunted teenager called Aoileann. It's also about motherhood, the private disasters people endure, and the difference between living, surviving, and merely existing.
Aoileann lives on the most rural part of a small, hostile island, cut off from the local community. Her paternal grandmother rules the roost; her shattered, guilt-ridden father comes and goes; and her mother - or what's left of her - lies bed-bound, silent, staring, gaping. They are survivors of a devastating catastrophe; an incident that has made them outcasts, despite being islanders themselves.
Aoileann's days are spent physically tending to her mother (TWs for caring for a sick person, wound detail and - what I could only call - body horror) and stealing off for the odd sea swim. One day, she comes upon a new arrival to the island, Rachel, and her newborn son, and is immediately captivated by her womanly form, the generousness of her body. Aoileann's need - the need to be loved - takes over, and the story cranks up its dark and sinister hum.
This is a powerful, unrelenting and unnerving novel, with horror elements not unlike the work of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson (I was also reminded of the work of fellow Irish writer, Sue Rainsford). The words probe and poke and nestle, and while some might be turned off by the story's grotesqueness, I found it stunning. An intelligent, intense and visceral read; one of the most enthralling books I have read in a long time.
Aoileann lives on the most rural part of a small, hostile island, cut off from the local community. Her paternal grandmother rules the roost; her shattered, guilt-ridden father comes and goes; and her mother - or what's left of her - lies bed-bound, silent, staring, gaping. They are survivors of a devastating catastrophe; an incident that has made them outcasts, despite being islanders themselves.
Aoileann's days are spent physically tending to her mother (TWs for caring for a sick person, wound detail and - what I could only call - body horror) and stealing off for the odd sea swim. One day, she comes upon a new arrival to the island, Rachel, and her newborn son, and is immediately captivated by her womanly form, the generousness of her body. Aoileann's need - the need to be loved - takes over, and the story cranks up its dark and sinister hum.
This is a powerful, unrelenting and unnerving novel, with horror elements not unlike the work of Angela Carter and Shirley Jackson (I was also reminded of the work of fellow Irish writer, Sue Rainsford). The words probe and poke and nestle, and while some might be turned off by the story's grotesqueness, I found it stunning. An intelligent, intense and visceral read; one of the most enthralling books I have read in a long time.
April 19, 2024
This is a very dark read with some WTF moments. The narrator is a young woman who lives with her grandmother on a small island off the coast of Ireland. Together they are the carers for her severely disabled mother. The rest of the islanders treat her as cursed so she has grown up almost in isolation except for the monthly visits of her father. There some truly awful events in this book but it’s impossible to stop reading. Intense and atmospheric.
November 13, 2022
Sophie White has my little readerly heart in her hands, now. First Corpsing- now Where I End. Sophie there is no end!! Crack that typewriter out. I need more.
This one is Merricat meets Folk Horror meets wailing Irish coastal desolation. Utter perfection.
My black heart is full.
This one is Merricat meets Folk Horror meets wailing Irish coastal desolation. Utter perfection.
My black heart is full.
March 31, 2025
"The sea responded to me in a way that no one ever had. It held me and drew me in. The sea didn’t love me—I am not stupid, no one loves me—but it didn’t ignore me."
Aoileann lives with her mother and grandmother on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. At nearly twenty-years-old, she has spent her life without love and without friendship, shunned by the town and her cold grandmother, mostly ignored by her father during his monthly visits, and bound to the care of her unresponsive and invalid mother, who Aoileann refers to only as "the bed-thing." When a young mother and artist from the mainland appears one day on the beach with her infant son and shows Aoileann the only kind regard she seems to have ever experienced in her life, Aoileann becomes obsessed and determined to finally break free of her oppressive existence, no matter the cost.
I spent my time reading Where I End swinging between feeling terrible pity for Aoileann and being horrified by her actions and potential. This short novella is bleak and disturbing and filled with dread. You don't know exactly what Aoileann may be capable of, or the cause of her mother's incapacitating illness, but you're filled with apprehension about discovering the answers to both of these questions.
What I learned about myself during this reading experience is you can couch "almost" any amount of bleak and disturbing in beautiful prose, set it on a cold, isolated island, and I am going to love it. Sophie White wrote the hell out of this little book and made me accept the deeply unsettling world of Aoileann's mind and ask for more.
"The sea is dead, gilded with the dead light of dead stars and, because it sways and sings and chants, it feels alive, although it’s not. It is teeming with death and it is very, very beautiful."
I read this through my Kindle Unlimited subscription, and immediately ordered a physical copy upon finishing.
Aoileann lives with her mother and grandmother on a remote island off the coast of Ireland. At nearly twenty-years-old, she has spent her life without love and without friendship, shunned by the town and her cold grandmother, mostly ignored by her father during his monthly visits, and bound to the care of her unresponsive and invalid mother, who Aoileann refers to only as "the bed-thing." When a young mother and artist from the mainland appears one day on the beach with her infant son and shows Aoileann the only kind regard she seems to have ever experienced in her life, Aoileann becomes obsessed and determined to finally break free of her oppressive existence, no matter the cost.
I spent my time reading Where I End swinging between feeling terrible pity for Aoileann and being horrified by her actions and potential. This short novella is bleak and disturbing and filled with dread. You don't know exactly what Aoileann may be capable of, or the cause of her mother's incapacitating illness, but you're filled with apprehension about discovering the answers to both of these questions.
What I learned about myself during this reading experience is you can couch "almost" any amount of bleak and disturbing in beautiful prose, set it on a cold, isolated island, and I am going to love it. Sophie White wrote the hell out of this little book and made me accept the deeply unsettling world of Aoileann's mind and ask for more.
"The sea is dead, gilded with the dead light of dead stars and, because it sways and sings and chants, it feels alive, although it’s not. It is teeming with death and it is very, very beautiful."
I read this through my Kindle Unlimited subscription, and immediately ordered a physical copy upon finishing.
March 25, 2024
This was an unusual read for me, not the kind of novel I usually choose, but one I selected because I admire the Irish publisher Tramp Press, who also publish Doireanne Ní Griofa and Sara Baume.
Where I End might be horror, but I'm not even sure since I've never read that genre before. The novel won the Shirley Jackson Award (2022), an award that recognises ‘outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic�, voted on by writers, critics, editors, and academics.
It depicts a short period in the life of a teenage daughter caring for a mute, incapacitated mother, who appears to have been that way since she was a baby. Her paternal grandmother, who also lives with them is about to start a job that will absent her from the house, allowing Aoileann a freedom and recklessness she has not until now experienced.
It reminded me of the experience of reading another Irish author, Jan Carson's The Firecatchers, another character who has no faculty for empathy.
In this case, we will first observe her in the time of carer for 'the thing' which I asked myself, is that her mother? And when she occasionally uses that word, I realise that yes it is.
This the mystery is seeded. Why does this young woman who daily cares for her immobile mother refer to her in such a way? What happened that this situation should have come about and why doesnt anyone know what goes on here? Why do they look at her strangely and spit as she passes?
It is a disturbing read that the arrival of a visitor, an artist with a young baby at first seems like an opportunity for growth and healing, but increasingly becomes another avenue of dysfunction creating a creeping fear of what is in danger of happening.
It speaks to both the fear and allure of the outsider, of the extremes of dysfunction that a lack of maternal nurturing and love can bring and the desire to overcome and escape all of that.
The writing and descriptions were brilliant, moving between enticing literary prowess and elements of the macabre. Somehow this is balanced out in a way that made me both wary of what was coming but unable to stop turning the pages.
Very well portrayed, a haunting, compelling read.
Where I End might be horror, but I'm not even sure since I've never read that genre before. The novel won the Shirley Jackson Award (2022), an award that recognises ‘outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic�, voted on by writers, critics, editors, and academics.
It depicts a short period in the life of a teenage daughter caring for a mute, incapacitated mother, who appears to have been that way since she was a baby. Her paternal grandmother, who also lives with them is about to start a job that will absent her from the house, allowing Aoileann a freedom and recklessness she has not until now experienced.
It reminded me of the experience of reading another Irish author, Jan Carson's The Firecatchers, another character who has no faculty for empathy.
In this case, we will first observe her in the time of carer for 'the thing' which I asked myself, is that her mother? And when she occasionally uses that word, I realise that yes it is.
This the mystery is seeded. Why does this young woman who daily cares for her immobile mother refer to her in such a way? What happened that this situation should have come about and why doesnt anyone know what goes on here? Why do they look at her strangely and spit as she passes?
It is a disturbing read that the arrival of a visitor, an artist with a young baby at first seems like an opportunity for growth and healing, but increasingly becomes another avenue of dysfunction creating a creeping fear of what is in danger of happening.
It speaks to both the fear and allure of the outsider, of the extremes of dysfunction that a lack of maternal nurturing and love can bring and the desire to overcome and escape all of that.
The writing and descriptions were brilliant, moving between enticing literary prowess and elements of the macabre. Somehow this is balanced out in a way that made me both wary of what was coming but unable to stop turning the pages.
Very well portrayed, a haunting, compelling read.
March 10, 2025
Si por algo me ha fascinado la historia que se esconde en Donde yo termino es por el desconcierto con el que juega su autora, con esa capacidad para sugerir imágenes que se van ensamblando poco a poco en tu cabeza, modelando a los monstruos más grotescos que puedas poseer en tu imaginación. Porque he de decir que he experimentado miles de sensaciones a lo largo de la lectura de este libro, conforme Sophie White va deslizando las pinceladas de ese pequeño ecosistema que se forma en la isla en la novela. Siempre sumergida en pura especulación, tanteando al lector para que intuya esos pasadizos de un laberinto que, a pesar de todo, es ficticio. Porque esta propuesta, lejos de lo que pueda parecer en un primer momento, no es más que un alegato en defensa de algo puro y básico en la vida de todos los seres humanos.
La historia que nos cuenta no merece ser desgranada en una reseña como esta, mejor lanzarse a ella sin mayor intención que dejarse llevar con la propuesta. Tan solo insinuaré que nos encontramos con una joven que es rechazada por la mayoría de los habitantes de la isla en donde vive, y que tendrá que hacer frente a ese desprecio mientras trata de sacar adelante las complicadas tareas que tiene que afrontar en el interior de su hogar. Desde ese sencillo planteamiento, Sophie White comienza a ahogarnos al desvelar esas tareas, siempre desde el punto de vista de Aoileann, protagonista de esta historia.
Y desde esa narración, maravillosamente desconfiable, se desvela la mirada de una chica de diecinueve años que trata de entender el mundo que le ha tocado vivir. Y todo a su alrededor resulta grotesco, incómodo, desmesurado, dando rienda suelta a la imaginación del lector que verá como todos los conceptos que insinúa Sophie White tienen las herramientas adecuadas para colarse en más de una pesadilla.
Porque uno de los grandes aciertos de esta novela la carencia de información con la que partimos en la historia, mucha de la cual no se desvelará de manera completa para así dejar que el propio lector sea el que saque sus propias conclusiones. Eso genera terror. Esa sensación de modelar desde lo oscuro de tus pensamientos unos momentos únicos que enturbian la historia. Los momentos en los que Aoileann realiza sus tareas son grotescos, desagradables y están llenos de sugerencias que estremecerán a los lectores más sensibles. De hecho algunos pasajes, curiosamente todos relacionados con el sentido del gusto, se verán intensificados por la manera tan exquisita de narrar de Sophie White, consciente del poder que tienen las palabras por encima de las imágenes. En la novela hay alguna que otra frase que puede resultar más aterradora que cualquier pesadilla que a uno se le atraviese en una noche de tormenta.
Por otro lado nos encontramos con el desarrollo de una isla que, por sí misma, también forma parte de los protagonistas de esta historia. Una localización dura, llena de acantilados y de mareas traicioneras, caprichosa en su orografía y presente como entidad dispuesta a ejercer su dominio entre los habitantes de sus tierras. Otro de esos misterios fascinante que lleva hasta las últimas consecuencias la idea de que no es necesario llenar una novela de descripciones minuciosas para poder sentir la amenaza que implica recorrer sus costas y arenas. Este tipo de emplazamientos nos trasladan de manera inmediata a otras localizaciones míticas de la narrativa de terror pero, de nuevo, la autora vuelve a proponer sus ideas para que sean ellas las que germinen en la mente de quien cruza sus páginas.
Pero, por encima de todo, esta historia es una reivindicación acerca de lo que supone la responsabilidad, la dureza sostenida del trabajo, la necesidad de soporte de unas cargas que los protagonistas de esta historia tendrán que asumir. Desde vertientes completamente opuestas pero que, sin embargo, confluyen hacia las mismas sensaciones. Y es que todos los personajes que recorren Donde yo termino son esclavos de esas cargas y estas encuentran la isla perfecta para dejarse consolar por el abrazo de la locura.
La historia que nos cuenta no merece ser desgranada en una reseña como esta, mejor lanzarse a ella sin mayor intención que dejarse llevar con la propuesta. Tan solo insinuaré que nos encontramos con una joven que es rechazada por la mayoría de los habitantes de la isla en donde vive, y que tendrá que hacer frente a ese desprecio mientras trata de sacar adelante las complicadas tareas que tiene que afrontar en el interior de su hogar. Desde ese sencillo planteamiento, Sophie White comienza a ahogarnos al desvelar esas tareas, siempre desde el punto de vista de Aoileann, protagonista de esta historia.
Y desde esa narración, maravillosamente desconfiable, se desvela la mirada de una chica de diecinueve años que trata de entender el mundo que le ha tocado vivir. Y todo a su alrededor resulta grotesco, incómodo, desmesurado, dando rienda suelta a la imaginación del lector que verá como todos los conceptos que insinúa Sophie White tienen las herramientas adecuadas para colarse en más de una pesadilla.
Porque uno de los grandes aciertos de esta novela la carencia de información con la que partimos en la historia, mucha de la cual no se desvelará de manera completa para así dejar que el propio lector sea el que saque sus propias conclusiones. Eso genera terror. Esa sensación de modelar desde lo oscuro de tus pensamientos unos momentos únicos que enturbian la historia. Los momentos en los que Aoileann realiza sus tareas son grotescos, desagradables y están llenos de sugerencias que estremecerán a los lectores más sensibles. De hecho algunos pasajes, curiosamente todos relacionados con el sentido del gusto, se verán intensificados por la manera tan exquisita de narrar de Sophie White, consciente del poder que tienen las palabras por encima de las imágenes. En la novela hay alguna que otra frase que puede resultar más aterradora que cualquier pesadilla que a uno se le atraviese en una noche de tormenta.
Por otro lado nos encontramos con el desarrollo de una isla que, por sí misma, también forma parte de los protagonistas de esta historia. Una localización dura, llena de acantilados y de mareas traicioneras, caprichosa en su orografía y presente como entidad dispuesta a ejercer su dominio entre los habitantes de sus tierras. Otro de esos misterios fascinante que lleva hasta las últimas consecuencias la idea de que no es necesario llenar una novela de descripciones minuciosas para poder sentir la amenaza que implica recorrer sus costas y arenas. Este tipo de emplazamientos nos trasladan de manera inmediata a otras localizaciones míticas de la narrativa de terror pero, de nuevo, la autora vuelve a proponer sus ideas para que sean ellas las que germinen en la mente de quien cruza sus páginas.
Pero, por encima de todo, esta historia es una reivindicación acerca de lo que supone la responsabilidad, la dureza sostenida del trabajo, la necesidad de soporte de unas cargas que los protagonistas de esta historia tendrán que asumir. Desde vertientes completamente opuestas pero que, sin embargo, confluyen hacia las mismas sensaciones. Y es que todos los personajes que recorren Donde yo termino son esclavos de esas cargas y estas encuentran la isla perfecta para dejarse consolar por el abrazo de la locura.
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