Rating: ★
Catherine House is a strange story about a fictitious, prestigious school. It follows Ines who isn’t all that invested in her classes. She has a mysterious past. The school itself allows students to do whatever they want as long as they pass their classes. There’s drinking and parties and sex. However, the students aren’t allowed any contact with the outside world for three years. Ines is soon put on probation, but she seems to drink a lot and sleep. It’s clear she’s running from something that happened before coming to Catherine. What’s more to this story is something called plasma that the school is studying for seemingly magical properties; or at least the story frames it as beyond the realms of known science. Ines isn’t in the plasma concentration, so she sees certain things from afar and is interested in delving farther.
I’m a slow reader and I’ve been in a slump for quite some time. Many, many months. I picked up this book thinking it was a gothic mystery that would have me turning the pages quickly. That wasn’t the case. I started reading this book around May or June and now it’s October and I’m only half-way through. I finally asked myself, Am I in a slump or is this book boring? Everything happens so slowly, and nothing seems to happen at all. Our main character doesn’t care about anything. She’s depressed and hiding. She doesn’t interact a whole lot with anyone. The interactions she does have are very muted. I suppose this book could be seen as highly philosophical, which is why it bored me. I’m not in the right headspace for it, so I couldn’t enjoy it. I like strong characters and interesting plots. Ines is not strong in any sense. She’s weak-willed, sleepy (literally), and detached from reality. Her perspective is utterly uninteresting. Perhaps that was a choice so that the school itself would shine, but the descriptions of strange goings-on don’t hit very hard since Ines isn’t all that involved. She also doesn’t seem to care. There’s no meat to this story.
When I don’t or can’t finish books, I always rate them one star. It couldn’t hold my attention so I couldn’t be bothered to finish it. When thinking about reading it at night, I would consistently turn away because I didn’t want to go into the story. Painfully boring.
Tiny Leaf Books 