{"id":30712,"date":"2025-06-26T22:27:32","date_gmt":"2025-06-27T02:27:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/?p=30712"},"modified":"2025-06-26T22:27:32","modified_gmt":"2025-06-27T02:27:32","slug":"ivy-compton-burnett-a-house-and-its-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/2025\/06\/26\/ivy-compton-burnett-a-house-and-its-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivy Compton-Burnett: A House and Its Head<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/span><\/div>

A House and Its Head<\/strong><\/em><\/span>
\nby Ivy Compton-Burnett (1935)<\/span>
\nNYRB Classics (2001)<\/span>
\n291 pp<\/span><\/p><\/h3><\/div>

\"\"A<\/span> House and Its Head<\/i> is the first Ivy Compton-Burnett novel I\u2019ve read, and I had no real notion of what to expect. Nothing quite prepared me for this dark and twisted tale of family\u2014if \u201cfamily\u201d is even the right word.<\/p>\n

The first chapter\u2014which, like most of the book, is composed almost entirely of dialogue\u2014introduces us to Duncan and Ellen Edgeworth on Christmas morning in 1885. They\u2019re waiting for the children to come down. Cozy, right? No. Duncan and Ellen are in their sixties, and their two daughters are twenty-four and \u201cnearly eighteen.\u201d Also staying with them is Grant, their nephew (25). From the beginning, things feel off in this home. Why exactly? It\u2019s hard to pinpoint\u2014but something in the biting, elliptical dialogue between these so-called \u201cchildren\u201d put me on edge.<\/p>\n

Ellen struck me as the most \u201cnormal,\u201d largely because she seemed the most outside the world of this home. It\u2019s clear she has had to endure the horrors of living with Duncan all these years and when illness strikes she finally says something true:<\/p>\n

\n

“I can’t help what Father says: I must stay at home today. People must sometimes be ill. I have been ill less often than l ought in my life, because Father hated illness. I must some times be like other people. This house has to be so different from other houses; and lately I have felt it is too much for me, all this difference.”<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

But she is not our anchor for long. The novel plunges into a world of affairs and seductions\u2014no, that\u2019s too tame. A world of incest, abuse, and desire that leads to murderous thoughts.<\/p>\n

So did I like A House and Its Head? It was not a pleasant read, that\u2019s for sure. But it was fascinating\u2014morbidly so\u2014and powerfully rendered in its depiction of cruelty and coercion in this particularly grotesque domestic theater.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are some of my thoughts on Ivy Compton-Burnett\u2019s 1935 novel A House and Its Head<\/em>, a biting, dialogue-driven domestic drama that left me rattled\u2014in the best (and worst) ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30713,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"libsyn-item-id":0,"libsyn-show-id":0,"libsyn-post-error":"","libsyn-post-error_post-type":"","libsyn-post-error_post-permissions":"","libsyn-post-error_api":"","playlist-podcast-url":"","libsyn-episode-thumbnail":"","libsyn-episode-widescreen_image":"","libsyn-episode-blog_image":"","libsyn-episode-background_image":"","libsyn-post-episode-category-selection":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_thumbnail":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_theme":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_height":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_width":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_placement":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_use_download_link_text":"","libsyn-post-episode-player_custom_color":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-explicit":"","libsyn-post-episode":"","libsyn-post-episode-update-id3":"","libsyn-post-episode-release-date":"","libsyn-post-episode-simple-download":"","libsyn-release-date":"","libsyn-post-update-release-date":"","libsyn-is_draft":"","libsyn-new-media-media":"","libsyn-post-episode-subtitle":"","libsyn-new-media-image":"","libsyn-post-episode-keywords":"","libsyn-post-itunes":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-season-number":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-type":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-title":"","libsyn-post-episode-itunes-episode-author":"","libsyn-destination-releases":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-enabled":"","libsyn-post-episode-advanced-destination-form-data-input-enabled":false,"libsyn-post-episode-premium_state":"","libsyn-episode-shortcode":"","libsyn-episode-embedurl":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[800,1516],"tags":[926,1517,913],"coauthors":[505],"class_list":["post-30712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-ivy-compton-burnett","tag-1930s","tag-1517","tag-nyrb-classics"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/A-House-and-Its-Head-Featured-Image.jpg?fit=700%2C400&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pqqvZ-7Zm","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30712"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30712\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30715,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30712\/revisions\/30715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30713"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30712"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mookseandgripes.com\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=30712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}