Review: 'The Temple House Vanishing,' by Rachel Donohue

Teenage crushes and charismatic teachers have been a fraught subject for millennia. A Socratic dialogue (Plato's "Phaedrus"), "The Letters of Abelard and Heloise," songs by the Police, and, in 2021, countless Twitter hashtags all attest to feelings it inspires.

In Rachel Donohue's "The Temple House Vanishing," what happens at a remote windswept private school as a handsome male teacher manipulates teenage girls will continue to have tragic repercussions decades later.

Donohue, who was awarded the 2017 Hennessy New Irish Writer award for her short story "The Taking of Mrs. Kennedy," offers in her debut novel an evocation of gothic horror. While the dread never overwhelms, the sense that characters are haunted by what is happening at the school is felt from the moment that Louisa, the scholarship student, arrives. And the echo of du Maurier's Rebecca is deliberate. "I dream of it still, the school by the sea. It's always that first September day that returns."

The sign for the school "hangs off a crumbling granite pillar" and her family's car drives through "rusting, wrought-iron gates." There are cliffs nearby. The school is a girls' Catholic boarding school, run by nuns.

At the school, Louisa comes under the tutelage of Mr. Lavelle, the art teacher. He, Louisa and Louisa's new friend Victoria form the rays of a triangle. Lavelle challenges the girls' intellects, and leads them into discussions not only of art, but of philosophy and other heady matters. The thrill of being taken seriously by their teacher is exciting for bright girls, especially Louisa, who has been starving for intellectual validation.

But the discussions feel freighted with the readers' growing awareness that Lavelle has moved beyond teaching and appears to be grooming the girls. When Louisa and Mr. Lavelle disappear one night, never to be found, the scandal attracts headlines, but the mystery goes unsolved.

A journalist who grew up on the same street as Louisa decides to write an article on the 25th anniversary of the vanishing. Donohue switches the narration between the voices of the journalist and Louisa. Readers hear Louisa's voice for the first time just as her parents drop her off at Temple House, as she celebrates her "escape" from her previous life. She has done this by achieving high test scores that put her into a better school and a route upward in a class-bound culture, but also because boarding school offers a chance to get away from her parents' impending divorce.

For Louisa, Victoria is the friend who recognizes that they are different from the other girls. She describes moments between them as an "unfurling," a rush of emotion as the recognition of their connection hits. And the intensity of their female friendship is stoked by their sharing of literary allusions that make them feel as if they are speaking their own language. Mr. Lavelle adds sparks to the intellectual burning they experience.

In an atmosphere where the cacophony of teenage hormones blares amid a community of nuns who have directed their passion toward the religious life, Donohue adds to the sense of shambolic emotions at play with skillful pacing. And as the wind sings through the cracks in the old windows, ghost stories are born.

Lorraine Berry is a writer and book critic in Oregon.

The Temple House Vanishing
By: Rachel Donohue.
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 304 pages, $16.95.