Pippin's Journal

By Rohan O'Grady

Book Overview

"Slowly, and not without a certain inexplicable feeling of foreboding, I limped up the weed-grown gravel path to the door of Cliff House ..." John Montrolfe, malformed and malevolent, the latest inheritor of the family curse, has come to England to claim his ancestral inheritance. He is grudgingly admitted to the Gothic mansion by a toothless old crone, and night after night his dreams are haunted by the phantom image of a beautiful young maiden. When he reaches out to touch the girl, the spectre's head falls grotesquely to one side and she vanishes as he awakes in horror.

Montrolfe happens upon a secret drawer containing an old journal, written by the girl whose ghost has haunted him. In its pages a strange and horrible story unfolds, a tale of murder and buried treasure, a story that will finally reveal young Pippin's terrible fate and the origin of the Curse of the Montrolfes ...

A spellbinding Gothic page-turner, Rohan O'Grady's Pippin's Journal (1962) received rave reviews on its initial publication and returns to print at last to enchant and terrify a new generation of readers.

"A story that should be read at a sitting, preferably when the wind whistles like a demon around the house and curtains are drawn against rain-splashed windows ... O'Grady writes in the tradition of the Gothic novelists and the story she tells might have been written by Edgar Allan Poe or a Bront ... Sheer reading enjoyment." - Pittsburgh Press

"An engaging tale of horror." - New York Herald Tribune

"There is a lurid fascination about the yarn, which instills a blood-chilling impatience to learn what happens next." - Chicago Tribune

"Elegance and sinister poetry ... O'Grady manages the romantic macabre with dancing gusto and] moves naturally in the language and atmosphere of the eighteenth century of her ghosts." - Daily Herald (London)

"Who could resist the pursuit of the Montrolfe curse? ... T]ruly in the spirit and tradition of Otranto." - Baltimore Sun

"A natural, well-wrought, well-written shocker." - Buffalo News

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1960241184
• ISBN13: 9781960241184
• Release Date: June 2024
• Publisher: Valancourt Books
• Length: 206 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.0" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A unique book

Rohan O'Grady (aka June Skinner) is a Canadian writer with two known novels published: "Pippin's Journal" (also titled "The Curse of the Montrolfes" ) and "Let's Murder Uncle" which was adapted for film in the sixties. The common quality to both books is the author's understanding of how children think and talk. But the heroine of "Pippin" is far from being an ordinary thirteen year old. Like Emily in "A High Wind in Jamaica" she is a young girl who has been changed by circumstances. The core of this book is the strange relationship between Catherine , nicknamed Pippin, and Guy Montrolfe; a driven, Heathcliff type of Byronic hero. But as well as being a love story, it is also a ghost story and an adventure yarn. Comparisons with the Brontes, R.L. Stevenson and Henry James are tempting. Certainly it is far more than the "gothic" label implies. A book that will haunt you.