The Dumb House (Vintage Classics)

The fact that there are only 51 reviews here is astounding. Clearly this author, this book deserves more. So although this review is unprepared and will be insufficient I will leave it here feeling inspired.There are a million books out there, maybe a lot more than that. There are a million ideas about what makes a book GREAT.When I think of the GREAT books that I have read they are the ones I cannot remove from myself. They are a part of me as my skin is. I cannot remove them and continue to live. Not having read them. They, the message, the epiphanies cannot be unwound.This book is perhaps, the most visceral book I've ever read. It felt like it took a bit of my naivete with it. I have only been able to read it on kindle. Which I recommend. If you're considering whether to read it or not, take this as a sign from the READING GODS and don't read it to enjoy it. Read it to forgive the manipulator, the scientist, the experimenter in ALL of us!

Of course, this book is hauntingly amazing. As far as the purchase went.. It went great. Book in fabtastic condition and arrived promptly. Great read.

If I could give this no stars, I would. I ended up throwing it in the trash.

I hated almost every second I read this book. To be fair, it was mostly because the synopsis (which is what initially captured my attention) made promises it did not keep: the book was much more about other things I was not in for, which were really dark and straight up disgusting (which in itself isn't negative, that's just what the vibe of the story -which I don't enjoy- was and what it wanted to convey). The problem for me was that most of that was not mentioned in the synopsis. If it was, I probably wouldn't have bothered to read it.

4.5 stars. This was one of the most disturbing stories I've ever read.

One of the most haunting, dark and beautiful novels I've ever read. Everyone should read it

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

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

This book was nothing like what I thought it would, and for that reason, it disappointed me.I believed this novel was going to be a creepy, man-holds-children-captive kind of story, but unfortunately it wasn’t. This was far more intelligent, with lots of complex writing than I had expected, and due to that, I couldn’t really get into it. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed so I feel like a lot of this book went over my head.There’s no doubt about it, our narrator is one of the most terrifying and disturbed narrators I’ve ever come across, and thanks to my love for the macabre, this made reading his story sometimes enjoyable. When he was simply recalling his actions in the here and now, I was interested, but when he got into his ramblings about his ideas on testing the innateness of language, my mind moved onto different things. Hence it taking me almost a week and a half to read 204 pages.Burnside is an incredibly beautiful writer, it doesn’t surprise me to see he’s a poetry writer as well as a fiction writer. I’m always one to praise an author for their poetic prose, but sometimes things get a little too complex for me and all meaning is lost on me. This happened a lot throughout reading The Dumb House.In terms of the story, this wasn’t exactly what I had hoped it would be. It was very slow to get anywhere, and even when we did get to learning his experiment on his children, that whole section was equally slow-moving. It didn’t feel like an awful lot happened other than several uncomfortable s*x scenes and some horrifying violence.Unfortunately, this one didn’t do it for me, which is a shame, because I was so looking forward to reading it. I suppose if you love intelligent fiction that is reasonably ambiguous, this might be great for you. I personally like a book that challenges my mind, but this one went too far for me.

Wow! This was a book group choice and I’m looking forward to discussing it. It’s definitely an interesting one. Pretty dark and not for the faint hearted!

Why nobody talks about this book? It is an incredible dark and ruthless story. Not for sensitive and below 18 readers. It has alot of brutal violence in it. But the product is solid and story is unique. I loved it.

Not for a normal person would like I guess but I enjoyed reading it though. I wanted to know how it ends lol

This is quite an incredible book, a strange combination between American Psycho and a tale from 1001 Nights. Our main character, Luke, is obsessed with discovering the origin of language in the human mind and he will thus endeavour to find that out. To do so, he is inspired by a tale his mother used to tell him, where a Moghul king raised some chosen children is the utmost silence to see if once they would be grown-ups they would talk, invent a language of their own or remain mute. Luke will follow this dream in a cold methodical manner, entirely devoid of feelings and passion, except sometimes a dose of rage that makes him become violent and dangerous.This novel is both very poetic and cold as a razor blade, and it is not its only paradox as it can enrapture us at times with a dreamlike quality or make us shudder as we would in a genuine thriller. John Burnside is a poet, it is thus not surprising for him to write a book on the origin of language, but he is also the one who eradicates words in this novel. All along that book, we become the onlookers two experiments, one of a literary kind which elegantly blends different genres, and the other where we witness the birth and rise of a very singular serial-killer.