Library Director’s Notebook
April, 2012
I just finished reading a book which in less than 230 pages propelled me through emotions as varied as pity, repugnance, horror, doubt, and compassion. This short but intense book is The Butterfly Cabinet by Bernie McGill.
I found this book as I find so many in the library these days. It was featured in one of the outstanding, thematically-based displays of fiction and non-fiction prepared by our reference department staff. These displays help us all to discover treasures we may have missed when they were first purchased by the library.
Although the old saying claims we should never judge a book by its cover, that adage does not apply here. The cover of The Butterfly Cabinet is dominated by the grim façade of a brooding castle under a glowering sky, a perfect image that gives a powerful hint of what the book will reveal.
The story is told through two distinct voices: the memories of ninety year old Mattie McGlade, former servant in Oranmore castle and the long lost diaries of Harriet Ormand, mistress of the castle.
A proud and unbending woman, Harriet Ormand was obsessed with delivering “apt punishments” to her large and growing family, for even the smallest of provocations. Though emotionally remote from her children and her doting husband, Harriet was passionate about two things: horses and butterfly collecting. About these two loves she waxes poetic, but her inability to view the rest of the world with any measure of empathy or insight leads her to commit a callous act that will result in the death of her four year old daughter, Charlotte.
Mattie, on the other hand, is young, innocent, and protective of the children, bringing her inevitably on a collision course with her domineering mistress. Mattie holds a secret that she feels compelled to reveal as her own advanced age brings her closer to death. That secret, concerning Mattie’s actions, or inactions, explains finally the mystery surrounding the death of little Charlotte, decades earlier.
This is a book with its own atmosphere of sadness, fear, and subtle cruelty. It is not a ghost story, but there is a haunted feeling that seems to pervade the castle and all of its occupants, both before, and especially after, the death of an innocent child. Perhaps it is good that The Butterfly Cabinet can be read in just a couple of sittings; otherwise the sad and haunted feeling of the story might make reading the book a little too unnerving!
