Heap House
Written by Edward Carey
Narrated by Ben Allen and Bea Holland
4/5
()
Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
The Iremongers are a mean and cruel family, robust and hardworking, living in the Heaps, a vast sea of lost and discarded items.
A storm is brewing over Heap House. The Iremongers are growing restless and the whispers are getting louder. When Clod meets Lucy, a girl newly arrived from the city, everything changes.
The secrets that bind Heap House together begin to unravel to reveal a dark truth that threatens to destroy Clod's world.
A W. F. Howes audio production.
Edward Carey
Edward Carey was born in 1970. Both his novels, Observatory Mansions and Alva and Irva, are published by Picador. He lives in London and France.
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Heap House Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for Heap House
69 ratings11 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Truly the most bizarre and original book I have read in years. The house, the heap, and birth objects are very original. I didn't expect the end, which was also very interesting.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Very interesting writing style, and very peculiar, alternate-Dickensian setting. Plot very slow to get started. I got bored waiting.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Heap House is part of a three-book series. The titles are Heap House, Foulsham and Langdon, making the Iremonger Trilogy. I was thrilled when I saw them on Amazon.com- so I purchased two and placed a pre-order on the third. Now I'm sorry I did. Heap House was about many things, but the way the book was written, I didn't find myself caring about a single one. First off, it would seem every one is related to the Iremongers, which is supposed to be a family name. The problem is that the family marries within itself. The more Iremonger's, the more family but third, fourth and fifth cousins don't matter. They're called Iremonger's- because they're distant family. Only the full blooded Iremonger's are called by actual names. Also each member, once born, is given an item. They have to carry this item everywhere they go. All the time. Some even form their personalities from these items. Sadly, most of these items were once people! That's the other piece to the story that was interesting, yet crazy! Clod, who is a second cousin can hear the items that were once people, but they only say one thing: their names. First and last, that's all they say. If a birth item is lost, everyone calls on Clod to help them find it- he's the only one who can hear them. Anyway, things aren't normal in Heap House anymore and before Clod is to marry another Iremonger named Pinalippy, he and a distant Iremonger must solve the mystery of why things are turning into people and people into things... It was boring, I'm sorry. It was almost written in rhyme at times, with repetition and sentences almost put together backwards. I grew tired of it early on. There was a time when I'd been thrilled to get this book. Now I wish I'd purchased something else. Sorry. Time find another book; a good book. Have a great one!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Clod Iremonger grows up in Heap House, Forlichingham, London, among many members of his family. The Iremongers have made their fortune from the enormous dust heaps that surround the house on all sides, reaching as far as the eye can see. One day, a young orphan called Lucy Pennant joins the household as a serving girl, and the lives of everyone in Heap House will never be the same again ...Prepare yourself for a wildly imaginative, compellingly gothic, refreshingly eccentric, surprising, unpredictable, fantastic, bizarre, macabre, unexpectedly poignant and yet psychologically mature novel with lots of undercurrents, and illustrations by the author that enhance the reading experience no end. Told principally with Clod and Lucy's voices, Clod Iremonger must be one of the most unlikely heroes I've yet encountered in fiction, and I almost wanted to cheer when his moment comes. This is a book that sweeps the reader before it, as do the dust heaps in a storm; and yet Clod and Lucy's voices at times just sound too similar, the confusing timeline at the beginning of the book and a seeming contradiction at the end mean I can't award it the full five stars. With a terrific cliff-hanger at the end of the novel I can't wait for the second volume in the trilogy. Recommended for grown-ups and teenagers alike.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Weird, gothic, coming of age, mystery. I liked it!
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I’ve been reading Angie Sage’s series and hence I got attracted by the title of this work. I was pleasantly surprised with this rather peculiar story where people of the Iremonger family all have a birth object they cannot part with. Simple, you’d say.. but things are not always what they seem! Looking forward to find out how this dark tale with a whiff of steampunk continues in the 2nd book!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heap House is one of the strangest, most fantastical books I’ve read.How to begin? Clod Iremonger is part of the Iremonger family. The Iremonger family has taken many, many things from many, many people. They take orphans and people’s belongings. They live in Heap House, which has grown over the century into a mass of passages and rooms. It’s very easy to get lost. Around the house is a great heap of trash--belongings taken or scrapped from trash. It’s fantastically deep and miles wide, which can generate storms and swallow people whole. To add to the strangeness, each Iremonger has a “birth object,” which he or she is given upon birth and must keep all the time or feel lost. Clod has a bath plug. One would assume he has a watch because it’s on a chain in a pocket. Clod is unusual; he can hear the birth objects. They speak--they speak a name. Clod has told the family doctor who tells Clod he is special and needed by the family when he comes of age.Lucy Pennant loses her parents when they stop moving--no one knows why this ailment is affecting people throughout town. An Iremonger arrives to get new servants from the orphanage where Lucy has been placed. Lucy finds the Iremonger’s strange. Everyone’s name is Iremonger, so she is to forget her name. Oddly, no one remembers his/her real name. She’s determined not to forget. She’s given a “birth object,” which she finds odd and then odder that she worries about it. Wandering about, she meets Clod. Talking to the real Iremongers is against the rules. Slowly, both Clod and Lucy discover that Heap House is more than appears.There is little dialogue in this book. You need to concentrate at the beginning to figure out all the strange stuff going one. There are long paragraphs full of lists, detailing how strange everything is. The closest I can come to recommending this book---is, if you like Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, you might find this intriguing although they are not similar--just both unusual and fantastical.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I admit that this book started out slow for me, but the more I read the more my interest was gaining. The premise is that there is a family who oversees the Heap, and each family member is given a birth object. However, we soon discover that these birth objects have names — and possibly identities — of their own. There's a strict order to the place, rules abound, and everyone knows their place. Until Clod falls in love with the wrong girl. This is basically a book about social order. I'm curious to see where the series goes and how the author explains what prompted the structure of the social order to begin with.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I came upon Edward Carey's Iremonger series by mistake. I don't mean that I stumbled across his books and didn't know what I was getting into…it was more that I had Mr. Carey mixed up with Edward GOREY. If you've seen their artwork at a glance then you might see how I came to make such a grievous error. I had seen some of Gorey's art a few years ago and made a note to grab some of his work…and then I was recommended this trilogy and thought I had finally got around to completing my goal. However, I think this was a happy accident because I really enjoyed this disturbing set of books. Firstly, I appreciate authors who do their own illustrations because they see their characters and worlds most clearly and they tend to feel like living things instead of one dimensional drawings. Heap House, Foulsham, and Lungdon make up the Iremonger trilogy and they chronicle the story of that clan of foul, loathsome dealers of filth, the Iremongers. In particular, these books detail the misadventures of Clod Iremonger and the irascible Lucy Pennant. Even though this sits on the shelves of the young adult section and are chock full of illustrations I must caution that no punches are pulled. All that is base and evil is dragged to the front and shown in shocking detail which is probably why I like it so much. There are no characters without flaws. However, this is not to say that this is told in a realistic fashion because if it was then I'd immediately fear for our very lives. The Heaps are made up of all the trash of that great offal generating city that goes by the name of London. The Iremongers are Regents of the refuse and under them are the residents of Forlinchingam (or Foulsham as it comes to be called). They are kept separate from London (Lungdon to some) by giant walls. You'd think this cruel enough but there's a terrible illness striking at the people. It's ridiculous. It's unsettling. It's…well I don't want to give the game away. ? Fair to say, this Victorian tale has evildoers, unlikely heroes, romance, and lots of rubbish besides. My one complaint is that I felt the ending didn't meet the expectations created by the buildup of the story arc. It wasn't bad but it lacked the punch that I wanted. I do think this is worth a read if for nothing else than for the ghastly illustrations which I absolutely adored. 9/10
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inbred magical steampunk hoarders. Now, why didn't I think of that? Because I lack the imaginative chops for any such concept, much less the ability to execute it in writing. The only reason this book doesn't have five stars is because, based on the screaming wit of the dialogue on one single page (the one where the heroine is about to risk her life venturing 500 yards into the Heaps, and has this boy for an Anchor who should have been a main character, he was so hilarious), I felt the author was holding out on me. More comical relief along the same lines would have been great. Also it needs more illustrations. However, this is totally my kind of thing, a sort of Dahlesque, Snickety flight of dark fantasy set in a Ghormenghastic garbage pile outside of London. Sign me up for the whole trilogy.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Inbred magical steampunk hoarders. Now, why didn't I think of that? Because I lack the imaginative chops for any such concept, much less the ability to execute it in writing. The only reason this book doesn't have five stars is because, based on the screaming wit of the dialogue on one single page (the one where the heroine is about to risk her life venturing 500 yards into the Heaps, and has this boy for an Anchor who should have been a main character, he was so hilarious), I felt the author was holding out on me. More comical relief along the same lines would have been great. Also it needs more illustrations. However, this is totally my kind of thing, a sort of Dahlesque, Snickety flight of dark fantasy set in a Ghormenghastic garbage pile outside of London. Sign me up for the whole trilogy.