Where I End

August 1, 2024
White's first horror novel, which won the Shirley Jackson Award in 2023, is much like the character of its protagonist, Aoileann: it is disturbing, and yet it will draw readers in and hold them, right up until the inevitable ending. Aoileann is a young woman living on an almost-deserted island off the coast of Ireland, populated by people who believe she is cursed. She lives with her grandmother and her mother, a bedridden woman whose name the reader does not learn until halfway through the novel. Aoileann, raised away from normal life and treated without compassion, meets a young vacationer named Rachel by chance on the beach and immediately sees her opportunity to get away from the tedious task of caring for a woman who has given her nothing. White uses eerie prose and a creepy setting to paint a picture for the reader of a family with no understanding of what family means, and a young woman who longs to be free of what binds her . . . and is willing to do anything to get what she wants.

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September 9, 2024
White (The Snag List) brings horror to the cliffs of the Irish islands in this eerily atmospheric outing. Bitter and isolated Aoileann lives as an accursed outcast from the other residents of her native island. In her rotting family home, she and her grandmother, Móraí, care for her bed-bound and speechless mother, whom Aoileann has resented for most of her life. When not attending to her mother, Aoileann weathers the cruelty and violence of her neighbors. Meanwhile, unaware of the island’s culture or history, mainlander Rachel comes to town with her newborn son for a monthlong artist residency. With their arrival, Aoileann makes her first ever friend—and drags up from the depths an evil that the entire island is afraid of. White uses the costal landscape and decaying village to create a palpable sense of isolation and dread. Indeed, the initial air of anxious revulsion is so powerful that the final revelation about the island’s secrets doesn’t feel like a big enough payoff. Still, this brutal tale has plenty to entertain fans of folk and body horror.