Lauren Mooney's debut novel Service delivers a meticulously crafted ghost story that speaks directly to contemporary anxieties about class, housing, and economic insecurity. The book, described as a very modern ghost story, draws on classic haunted-house traditions while grounding its terror in the all-too-real fears of precarious employment and homelessness.
A Precarious Life
Danielle, the protagonist, works as a PA at Hodgepodge, a dilettante arts charity with the strapline "for ideas." Her days consist of typing emails, making tea, and running personal errands for her monstrous boss, Jeannie, who sees no distinction between working for the charity and working for her. After a horrible breakup, Danielle finds herself unexpectedly homeless with no savings, no family support, and no room left in her overdraft. Jeannie offers her a place to stay at Westerley, the family's ancestral home in the middle of nowhere, ostensibly to "take care of the place."
A Haunted House with a Twist
Westerley has obvious antecedents in Shirley Jackson's Hill House and Susan Hill's Eel Marsh House, with dust-sheeted rooms and locked doors. But Mooney's novel quickly establishes its own identity. Danielle, alone in the house, encounters a fresh bowl of peaches on the sideboard, sees a face at the window, and wakes to find herself somewhere—or somewhen—else entirely. She hears hobnailed boots on the stairs and reaches for a calico apron that doesn't exist. The chills are genuinely spooky, as past and present begin to blur.
When Jeannie arrives unexpectedly with her equally appalling son Edward, Danielle moves from the master bedroom to the servants' quarters. Soon she is rising at dawn, cleaning up after them, and bringing afternoon tea to the drawing room. The lines between 21st-century employee and 19th-century maidservant dissolve. As the narrator notes, "Didn't she always bring Jeannie a green tea in the office? And didn't Jeannie, after all, ask her to 'take care of the place'?"
Class and Timeless Exploitation
Service is resolutely a book of the present day, addressing the housing crisis, the unsteady nature of a life in the arts without family backing, broken phones, and bad wifi. Yet Mooney's timeslip narrative makes clear how timeless some things are: loneliness, poverty, aspirations, and the feeling of toiling for somebody for no other reason than the order of one's birth. The novel explores the precariousness with which one must tiptoe between deference and degradation, and the effort to retain a sense of self in a world that subtly believes you to be lesser.
Edward, attempting a seduction with assault-adjacent undertones, announces that he is "Upstairs, Wooster and, er, Downton," whereas Danielle is "Downstairs, Jeeves, and ... Abbey." When she fails to laugh, he says, "It's a joke, Jesus. You work for my mum, so you're the staff? I was joking." Alone in the drawing room with the young master, Danielle—or perhaps her ghostly counterpart—has no idea what to do or how to escape.
A Chilling Reality
The hauntings of Service are genuinely chilling, but equally chilling is the real world in which so many Danielles have lived. The book asks: how many Edwards, for how many years, carried out their "seduction" with no consequences? How many poor girls have suffered worse with the threat of homelessness and penury hanging over them? The novel's meticulous evisceration of the class system stands by itself, driving home how little has changed in over 100 years—or perhaps how little ever changes.
Service by Lauren Mooney is published by Manilla (£16.99).
