Dave's Book Blog: "What the Fog Conceals" by R A Marno

Saturday, 5 September 2026

"What the Fog Conceals" by R A Marno

This is either a work of genius or it isn't.

Recently, I sat for two hours in the cinema watching Nostalghia, a film from celebrated director Andrei Tarkovsky. I was baffled. People moved incredibly slowly through surreal scenes. The camera panned in or out at a snail's pace. Very little made sense. Cineastes have told me it is a classic but a film buff friend with whom I watched it asked: is this a case of the Emperor's new clothes?

This novel felt like that. It is divided into chapters, each one told in the past tense from the third person point of view of one of the characters. The characters move and think slowly. They seem to spend their entire time wandering around a stately home, along corridors, from room to room, frequently pausing at a door of a room which they then decide not enter. In most of the chapters, they are alone. They discover strange things such as keys, or accounts ledgers, or maps, or buttons, or scraps of ribbon, and - in almost every chapter - a piece of paper, almost always folded, which has been wedged somewhere it wasn't before. This piece of paper will contain, usually, a gnomic inscription. These are, presumably, clues to a mystery. But there are so many of them that the reader loses track, unless they start noting things down - at which point they discover discrepancies that suggest unreliable narration. At this point (about chapter 9 out of 30) I started to lose the will to read on.

These leitmotifs were repeated so frequently, and so regularly, that I started to giggle when the next one came. The fog is thickening again, now it's thinning, oh no, it's getting thicker. Floorboards are creaking even though no-one is stepping on them. A door is ajar, another door is ajar, yet another door is ajar. Edward touches a latch, Kate touches a latch, Harriet touches a latch. This room is subtly different, the furniture has moved. And here's another map and, - guess what? - the map doesn't quite conform to the actual layout of the estate. This ledger has some blank pages: that must mean something. Here's a name, here are initials, here's a number. I felt as if I was trapped inside an automaton. I think I was supposed to feel mystified, horrified, I think I was supposed to feel impending doom, but it seemed more like farce.

I really wanted to like this book.

The prose is exquisite but at the same time pompous, portentous. I was impressed by the first few chapters. After that, I was deadened by the funereal rhythm of the sentences and irritated into mocking laughter by the repetitions.

And what made it really difficult to read was when I began to recognise an ostinato. Almost every chapter is narrated in the past tense from the point of view of a 3rd person character: Harriet, Edward, Kate of Patrick. However, all the voices of the characters sounded the same. This intrusion of the author's voice was most obvious in some of the characteristic phrases:

He tended to define things in terms of what they weren't:

“This was not work. It was atonement.” (Ch 12)
“It was not that the house was empty. It was that it was elsewhere, preoccupied with memory.” (Ch 14)
“It had not been placed there for worship. It had been left there to haunt.” (Ch 15)
“There was a quiet gasp from someone watching - not fear, not awe. Just release.” (Ch 16)

This was frequently done with a not ... but form:

“It had been placed there - not dropped, not fallen, but left.” (Ch 14)
“The gilded edge had warped slightly, not from damage, but from misalignment.” (Ch 14)
“Not the stillness of repose, but the breathless hush of something standing just out of sight.” (Ch 14)
“The names were not in order. They were not complete. But they were written with care.” (Ch 15)
“Not physically. Not visibly. But in weight. In presence.” (Ch 18)
“The past had returned not for apology, but for placement.” (Ch 19)
“And yet, they had come. Not for spectacle. Not for guidance. But to witness.” (Ch 19)

There was a great deal of use of very short sentences:

“When the line is crossed, it will not be redrawn. Only reburied.” (Ch 9)
“The registry book was gone. Not moved. Removed.” (Ch 12)
“A single name had been written in the centre: M. Quinn. No date. No notation. No cause.” (Ch 12)
“No age. No date. No annotation.” (Ch 15)

A surprisingly high percentage of paragraphs were ended in this way. It felt like an authorial tic.

I wondered whether this was a mark of genius. Ravel's Bolero is repetitive and achieves its mesmeric fascination through its constant repetition (it is said to be every snare drummer's nightmare). But the effect on this reader was sometimes to be irritated and at other times to be lulled into sleepiness. It became difficult to concentrate. And there are so many little details that needed my full attention.

Having said that, the plot isn't that difficult. Perhaps it is too simple for the long build up, shrouded in possibly spurious mystery. Some people have gone missing from the estate surrounding the stately home; they have been forgotten. Now something is bringing back the memories of the disappeared. Sometimes it seems as if the house and the land itself is taking an active part in these prompts to remember, but presumably the house itself isn't writing cryptic comments on usually folded scraps of paper so there must be some human agency at work. I'm not sure I was concentrating hard enough to learn who, if anyone, was doing that. By the end, I couldn't be bothered. I didn't care.

And yet ...

I wish I had enjoyed it. But in the end, I was exhausted.

Selected quotes:

“The fog had not rolled in with motion, nor settled like a drifting veil. It had arrived with purpose - dense, deliberate - folding itself around the house and grounds with a finality that felt less like weather and more like erasure.” (C 1)
“The land wasn't hidden; it was withholding.” (C 1)
“Stillness, to Harriet, had always been a form of power. Movement betrayed uncertainty. Stillness let the world explain itself.” (C 1)
“The silent precision of a woman who understood the house as both cathedral and tomb.” (C 1)
“The house was not just offering memories - it was selecting them. Curating impressions.” (C 2)
“He began to suspect that the house had not simply waited for him. It had summoned him.” (C 2)
“Even the slope beyond the chapel had taken on a subtle lean, as though the ground itself had been exhaling too long, and now sought to reclaim its breath.” (Ch 14)
“Every piece of the past was surfacing. Deliberately. She did not believe in hauntings, but she had begun to believe in persistence.” (Ch 15)
“The light changed before she entered. The mirror in the upper corridor returned its image half a second too late. The fire in the parlour burned crooked if she lit it herself.” (Ch 25)