The Cellar

Shirley J.                            Adult Fiction                    Kidnapping, child abuse in all forms

The Cellar: A Novel by Minette Walters  256 pages

The story is dark.   Muna, an 8 year old girl is taken from an orphanage in West Africa by the Songoli family.   They move her to a home in London and force her into slavery where she sleeps in the cellar.  She is mistreated by the mother through violent beatings, the father repeatedly rapes her and both the mother and father verbally abuse her.   Their son begins following in the father's footsteps in his wretched treatment of Muna.   They treat her as an imbecile, starving her, showing only loathing for her.   She is not taught to read nor write, her only interactions are with the three monsters abusing her.  At 14 she knows the English language from t.v. and radio snippets she manages to hear when the family have them on.  She memorizes the sequences she sees the mother do on her phone when shopping via the internet, etc.   One day the son goes missing and when the police are called in, Muna is brought upstairs and explained away as their "daughter."   Strangely enough she goes along with it.   Stockholm syndrome I'm guessing, but, there is far more going on here they do not give Muna credit for.  The ending is a twisted thing and leaves the sense that the story goes cold and flat and is a very unsatisfying end to an incredibly unjust situation.  I would not recommend this story.  It is like forcing yourself to watch a movie that isn't good then finding out the ending is worse and leaves you up in the air asking yourself, Whaaaat?  Yeah, this book is like that.  No endorsement here, it is a quick read full of hard to take events and while you root for Muna to get her vengeance you see she has become what they raised her to be.  I am still pondering the end.  I can only say this book will make the reader uncomfortable from beginning to end.   The brutalities humans put other humans through is more horrific than any ghost, gobblin or long leggedy beastie could ever inflict.  No endorsement for this story here.  The author does capture a caricature of innocence which makes it all the harder to read.