kerfol

In Kerfol, Edith Wharton tells the story of Anne de Barrigan, a French woman who was accused of murdering her overbearing older husband. She claims to have heard a pack of dogs near his body in the dark, although there were no dogs at Kerfol–no live dogs, anyway. Noyes takes this story as her inspiration and builds on its details, going so far as to incorporate some of Wharton’s wording in her first two tales.  In the first story, Noyes retells the events of Anne and her husband, their relationship and his murder through the eyes of her ladies’ maid. This personalizes the story that Wharton told mostly as Anne’s evidence and testimony given at her trial. In the rest of the stories, Noyes explores what happens to a house, to a place where such horrifying events occurred.