Review: The Cellar Below the Cellar by Ivy Grimes

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in return for an honest review.

‘When a wild solar storm wipes out all electronics and traps Jane at her grandmother’s house in the woods, she is forced to start a new life off-grid as part of a small, isolated community.

‘However, there is something very strange about her new neighbors, and the longer she lives under the eerie glow of the auroras, the more she feels her grandmother may be hiding unsettling secrets.

‘To have any hope in her new world, Jane must find the courage to step into her power and claim her identity, but that would mean facing whatever hides in the cellar below the cellar – a place that seems to be waiting for her.’

In The Cellar Below the Cellar, by Ivy Grimes, 33-year-old librarian Jane happens to be staying over at her grandmother’s in the sticks when a solar storm takes out all modern conveniences, from phones and cars, to cookers and treated water.

Never one to lose her head, Jane’s formidable grandmother comes up with a plan to maximise what resources are still available by teaming up with their nearest neighbours – who nonetheless live pretty far away by urban standards.

Jane is less stoic: she misses her old way of life in the city, and resents having to clean and garden for Mr and Mrs Osprey, a demanding, snobby senior couple who live a couple of miles up the road. And that’s before things get seriously weird. Objects start behaving in strange ways, Jane learns the Ospreys aren’t as perfect as they make themselves out to be, and she becomes compelled to visit the sub-basement of the title – which she’s avoided all her life, and not without good reason.

The Cellar Below the Cellar is weird, random (how on Earth did the author come up with those particular ideas, let alone manage to combine them? I am envious!), and fun to read, while also packing some emotional punches.

I’m a sucker for creepy/illogical hidden spaces (I even dream about them pretty regularly), so I was immediately attracted to this book by its title! The additional cellar more than lives up to its promise: Jane’s never seen it, despite it being attached to a house she’s highly familiar with; it’s down a creaky staircase and a ladder behind a small hidden door; and you never quite know what you’ll find there.

The end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it elements of the plot are well thought through, with the author considering the far-reaching consequences of the solar storms, the varying reactions of the four households at the centre of the story, and what they need to do if they’re to survive. The visuals of the storms themselves, the characters’ journeys along the silent roads between their houses, and the suggestion that other people are still out there and communicating via CB radio are brilliantly eerie.

As a thirtysomething bookworm who comes across as a younger adult-under-construction, is useless in a crisis unless firmly directed, and finds interacting with children anxiety-inducing, Jane is a character after my own heart. Importantly, while it takes her a while to even entertain the idea of visiting the cellar below the cellar, once it becomes apparent she’s going to have to go down there, she does it scared, and doesn’t pretend that she isn’t.

While Jane’s grandmother comes across as tough – because someone needs to be – her actions speak of tenderness and care. Not only did she raise Jane following the death of Jane’s mother (her daughter), but she’s never pushed Jane to visit the cellar below the cellar, waiting for her to be ready – even though Jane is the obvious choice to assume responsibility for the sub-basement when she’s gone. She also takes in a little girl, Mary, from a neighbouring family who get sick after not taking her advice about filtering water. While Jane put me in mind of assorted T. Kingfisher main characters (though capability is something she grows into, rather than starts off with), her grandmother gave me a Granny Weatherwax vibe.

Humour is something else The Cellar Below the Cellar has in common with the books of T. Kingfisher and Terry Pratchett. Jane’s narrative voice is often highly entertaining, especially whenever she encounters Dan, a young pastor with the esoteric hobby of capturing particularly fiendish demons in jars. There’s also a lot of dark humour around the Ospreys’ big secret, preventing matters from getting a little too heavy.

The Cellar Below the Cellar is a quirky, enjoyable tale of self-realisation at the end of the world.