The Yellow House by Emily O’Grady

Publisher's Synopsis

Even before I knew anything about Granddad Les, Wally and me sometimes dared each other to see how close to the knackery we could get. It was way out in the bottom paddock, and Dad had banned us from going further than the dam. Wally said it was because the whole paddock was haunted. He said he could see ghosts wisping in the grass like sheets blown from the washing line. But even then I knew for sure that was a lie.

Ten-year-old Cub lives with her parents, older brother Cassie, and twin brother Wally on a lonely property bordering an abandoned cattle farm and knackery. Their lives are shadowed by the infamous actions of her Granddad Les in his yellow weatherboard house, just over the fence.

Although Les died twelve years ago, his notoriety has grown in Cub's lifetime and the local community have ostracised the whole family.

When Cub's estranged aunt Helena and cousin Tilly move next door into the yellow house, the secrets the family want to keep buried begin to bubble to the surface. And having been kept in the dark about her grandfather's crimes, Cub is now forced to come to terms with her family's murky history.

My Review of The Yellow House by Emily O’Grady

The Yellow House is a tragic story narrated by 10 year old Cub, a young girl who lives on a rural property with her twin brother Wally and her Mum and Dad and older brother Cassie. The entire family are seen as pariahs by the nearby town thanks to the crimes committed by Les, Cub’s grandfather.

Along with the local knackery, also located on their property is a small weatherboard yellow house, the former home of Les who died 12 years earlier. Into this home move Cub’s aunt Helena and her daughter Tilly, their new neighbours and, Cub hopes, a new best friend.

Making friends is difficult for Cub and Wally and it’s something they can’t really figure out a reason for. But everyone in the town is aware of what Les had done years before and it’s the entire family that is being punished for it. As difficult as it may be to believe, Cub is one of the last to find out the truth about her family, never really questioning why she has never been included in anything the other kids at school did.

Gradually her family starts to fall apart, particularly when older brother Cassie makes a friend, Ian, who is new to the town. It’s elements of this friendship that creates a great feeling of unease in Cub. Unfortunately, being a 10 year old child, this feeling is poorly communicated to us, the readers, and even more poorly communicated to the other members of her family.

Because everything is seen through the eyes of a 10 year old it is, by necessity, a rather unreliable narrative with many scenes interpreted based on the ignorance and naivety of youth. This same drawback means that many of the events that take place throughout the book are only partially (at best) explained and are left very much up in the air. We found ourselves relying very much on Cub’s extremely limited understanding of the outside world which left us with scant information about what was actually taking place.

What does come through, right from the earliest pages is the sense that something bad is going to happen. There was a “not-quite-rightness” about life on the family’s property and, no matter how hard Cub tried to understand what it might be, it remains elusive right until the final pages.

This is a tragic story that deals with unfair persecution, mental health issues and the innocence of youth that’s unfairly lost. It’s another reminder that the world is not necessarily a fair place.