Book Review: Sundial by Catriona Ward (2022)

Dec 2

Written By Wyatt

I think I’m at the start of a begrudged love affair with Catronia Ward’s writing.

While I wrote a positive review for The Last House on Needless Street, it struck me as a bit too clever, the type of novel that garners a million plaudits and half a dozen starred reviews on the circuit but ultimately feels like a bit of a cheat when its secrets are laid bare. It's the kind of book I am tempted to call gimmicky, even deceptively shallow, though I know instinctively that those criticisms are missing the mark when it comes to articulating what I disliked about the novel.

There, she teased the reader with so much mystery, presenting each scene as something unfathomably and undeniably askew, arguably leaving readers utterly helpless to determine what the book was until the author’s chosen hour of revelation. Still, for all my hushed grumblings, my perhaps misguided bitterness that the book was undeserving of the absolutely monumental praise it received, I have to concede that there was something special in the pages, in Ward’s ability to spin a tale, even if I thought it was trying to be too clever.

Sundial has brought me ‘round, and I can say without pause that it’s the best book I’ve read in 2022. It’s a damned near perfect novel, so much so that it erased my misgivings and has granted Ward entry to the very, very short list of authors for whom I will preorder novels.

I went in without so much as a jacket blurb and suggest you do the same; the story is an ambitious, forlorn thing both masterfully crafted and terrible in the effectiveness of its human representation. The misery and fear experienced by the main character, Rob, felt very real throughout, and Ward has miraculously captured this with a piercing eye few writers her age possess.

Well, I suppose I should tell you a bit about the story.

Sundial opens with Rob, a late-twenties mother to two young girls, Callie and Annie, and wife to Irving, an alcoholic, serial philanderer, and disgraced academic who was born with a silver spoon that has since grown quite tarnished. She’s a burdened woman with a shadowy history from which she has created tremendous distance, and when she begins to find a number of dead and mutilated animals around her property, must turn to face it.

You see, Rob grew up in a place called Sundial, a remote manor in the desert that was part science lab, part hermit’s refuge. There, her adoptive parents, Falcon and Mia, conducted physiological experiments on unruly dogs across the valley from a now-defunct puppy farm. There’s also Pawell, an aging Polish immigrant who tells fanciful and disturbing stories when no one else is around, and Jack, Rob’s secretive, intelligent twin sister.

Jack and Rob have grown up in isolation, with only the company of their scientist parents and an endless rotation of graduate students to keep them company. They are educated but devastatingly sheltered, hiding cozy paperbacks and reliving the exchanges of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the only popular film they know–and this only from a movie poster. Each can handle a rifle better than a mascara brush, and they fill their days with chores and chidings, inventing a secret language for the sole purpose of abusing Mia, who watches over them like the mother they never knew.

As the girls age, the pull of the outside world strengthens and darkness comes to Sundial from within and without, leaving both Jack and Rob forever affected, and setting their lives. In time, Rob finds escape from the worst of the evils which beset her, but it comes at a terrible cost…and the results may be only temporary. Now, with the legacy of Sundial intruding into her imperfect life with Irving and her girls, Rob must face her past, and plumb the shadows that linger there.

Sundial takes place with the present framing the past. As Rob identifies the source of the mutilated animals as her daughter, Callie, she embarks on a sojourn back to Sundial, hoping to purge the old demons anew. The novel is a heart-breaking work of deep emotional resonance, tinged with the best elements of speculative fiction.

Ward understands the human relationships that underlie each passage, and seeds in her characters very real shortcomings that in time bear terrible fruit. The horror here is not fanged and leering, but that which lies at the heart of every person: the capacity to be horrendously cruel for a taste of crude power. It is a book where no one shines, and all victories are hard-won and bloody.

That’s it; I really don’t want to say anymore. Go read the damned thing.

Verdict: 9.1/10

Strengths

Affecting, memorable characters
Pervasive sense of menace throughout
Clean, sharp prose

Weaknesses

Feels slightly unbalanced, with some sections lingering perhaps more than necessary
Leaves enough mystery unexplored to potentially irritate some readers

You may also like: Wonderland by Zoje Stage

Sundial can be purchased through Amazon, Book Outlet, Barnes and Noble, or preferably, through an independent bookstore in your community.