Have you ever wondered what it would be like to think and feel
from a completely different prospective? I mean completely different!
Edward Carey successfully does this in his novel entitled, Observatory
Mansions. It is a strange novel about people living outside
the boundaries of the norms for society.

"Observatory Mansions" was the former manor house on
the Orme family estate. As the novel begins it sits behind a high
claustrophobic wall in a middle of a roundabout in an unnamed
English city. The dilapidated house has been sub-divided into
home to seven outcasts from society. The remnants of the Orme
family reside in apartment six. The main protagonist is Francis
Orme, junior. He works as a human statute in front of the public
library, wears white gloves that he never removes, and is the
self-proclaimed curator of a private collection of "loved
objects" that he has surreptitiously "collected"
from their owners. Francis Orme, senior, has neither spoken nor
moved in over twenty years following a stroke. Alice Orme, his
wife, is slightly more communicative, but she has taken to her
bed, with eyes and mouth shut, dreaming she is anywhere but where
she is. Peter Bugg, apartment ten, is a self-retired teacher who
"cries and sweats and smells of a hundred different smells."
Claire Higgs, apartment sixteen, lives in the reality of her television
and is only willing to confront the reality at her door during
commercial breaks. Dog Woman, better known as "Twenty"
(her apartment number) barks, growls, bites, and runs with a pack
of wild dogs in the local park. Finally, there is the Porter,
basement apartment, who also lacks a name and spends his time
scrubbing holes in the already threadbare carpets and hissing
at the other tenants. Into this strange world, comes Anna Tap,
apartment eighteen, who was an artisan of material restoration
for a museum until she began to go blind from her work. In her
unique way, she strives to pull each of the tenants out of themselves
to reveal their hidden stories and finally to restore them to
the "normalcy" of society sometimes to tragic consequences.

Observatory Mansions is an unusual and haunting novel.
The story of Observatory Mansion is told through the various viewpoints
and in the unique voices of its tenants. While each character
appears to be very bizarre and often quite unlikable, the more
I read and began to understand their pain, the more I could empathize
with their unique way of viewing the world. Initially, it took
me three tries to get into this book. Part I, introducing the
characters and their interaction, left this reader feeling the
disjointed dizziness of a funhouse. Once Anna Tap arrives at the
end of Part I, and the characters are set in context in Parts
II and III, their viewpoints begin to develop clarity and the
storyline comes into focus. By this point, I found it almost impossible
to put down. I began to think about the stories of the characters
and I could not wait to get back to the book to discover the story
and mental process of another character. A crisis situation forces
each of the tenants to respond by drawing on their inner resources.
Some will regress to former coping mechanisms while other draw
on newfound strengths. The ending has all the thrills of a roller
coaster ride. Long after I turned the last page, the characters
continued to haunt my mind. Part "Addams Family" part
"Far Side" cartoon, this novel is recommended for those
seeking a different kind of reading experience and who are not
afraid to risk being slightly confused or feeling a bit disjointed.
That, however, is all part of the "Quality Design" of
taking up residence in Observatory Mansions.

© 2001 Suzanne Garrison-Terry

Suzanne Garrison-Terry


Education: B.A. in History from Sacred Heart University, M.L.S.
in Library Science from Southern Connecticut State College, M.R.S.
in Religious Studies/Pastoral Counseling from Fairfield University,
and a M.Div. in Professional Ministry from New Brunswick Theological
Seminary. She is currently completing a Certificate in Spirituality/Spiritual
Direction from Sacred Heart University (July 2001). She is a Licensed
Minister of the United Church of Christ and an Assistant Professor
in Library Science at Dowling College, Long Island, NY.

Interests in Mental Health: I am interested in the interplay between
psychology and spirituality. My current research focuses on the
role of hormonal fluctuation during puberty, pregnancy, and peri-menopause
as a stimuli for mystical experiences. Through the study of autobiographical
accounts of the mystical experiences of “historically accepted”
female Christian mystics and additional biographical information,
I am analyzing the connection between the onset of mystical experiences
and biological data/symptomology for the potential existence of
hormonal fluctuation or irregularity. If this sounds like an unusual
topic, nota bene how many medieval female mystics began having
“vision” on or about the age of 40!

Categories: Fiction