The Lost History of Dreams by Kris Waldherr

Although I haven’t read many gothic books lately, The Lost History of Dreams has made me appreciate them again. Waldherr has reproduced the sights, sounds, and struggles of existence in early 1800s Paris and London through the eyes of her forlorn yet dignified leading man Robert. The main setting of the novel is the eerie, windswept moors of Shropshire, which also serve as the backdrop for Ada’s Folly and her childhood home, Weald House.

Every house has a tale to tell, Isabelle said. Many people say that Ada’s Folly is like a mansion out of a fairy tale. Other homes have a form akin to a poem, with spaces dedicated to aesthetics but lacking in usefulness. Only a few homes, though, tell ghost stories. They are designed to be crushed by grief and loss. And that’s what you’ll find deep within the very walls and doors of Weald House: a ghost story begun from love.

This house, which has fallen into disrepair, plays just as much of a role in the story as its mysterious matriarch Miss Isabelle Lowell. Mr. Highstead, hope is the least filling food there is. Although it gives the impression of being substantial, it dissolves in the mouth like ice.

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Tales Within Tales

I turned the pages quickly as a result of the poetry poem interspersed throughout and the character’s captivatingly misleading admissions. Do you like a shaky narrator? They are everywhere in this book. The Lost History of Dreams has some lovely wordplay, but there were also times when the book’s magic was broken by verbosity.

The most beautiful raven Robert has ever seen was sitting deep inside the yew. Her head, with its black tufts, curved harmoniously. black as coal eyes. feathers that appear to have been fashioned from dusk onward in their cobalt-tinged iridescence.

I’ll admit that “curve of harmony” has me baffled. Groupings of artistic descriptors like this felt a little heavy in the middle of this story, despite the fact that they are quite lovely in isolation. An insignificant flaw in an extremely successful fiction debut. The Lost History of Dreams by Kris Waldherr provides readers who enjoy historical fiction, literature, and poetry with an engaging and, dare I say, entrancing reading experience.

About The Book

Hugh de Bonne, a renowned Byronic poet, is found dead from a heart attack in his bathtub one morning. Hugh’s cousin Robert Highstead, a historian turned post-mortem photographer, is given the straightforward assignment of moving Hugh’s bones to a chapel for burial.

De Bonne constructed this chapel, a stained-glass idyll situated on the Shropshire moors, sixteen years earlier to house the remains of his devoted wife and inspiration, Ada. The chapel, a shrine for the fervent followers of de Bonne’s most recent book, The Lost History of Dreams, has been shut and abandoned since that time.

Ada’s bereaved niece demands that Robert accept her condition before she can unlock the glass chapel: Isabelle’s account of Ada and Hugh’s tragic marriage must be recorded over the course of five nights for Robert to be able to bury Hugh.

The secret of Robert’s own marriage, including that of his frail wife Sida, who has not been the same since the tragic accident three years ago, and the beginnings of his own morbid profession, which has him seeing things he shouldn’t—things from beyond the grave—emerge as the mystery of Ada and Hugh’s relationship becomes clearer.

Kris Waldherr effortlessly spins a sweeping and atmospheric gothic mystery about love and loss that blurs the line between the past and the present, truth and fiction, and ultimately, life and death.