Honour Thy Father

``You live a simple life here away from corruption,'' an abusive father tells his four motherless daughters in this eerily tragic and mesmerizing first novel. ``I cannot risk you becoming corrupted.'' Virtually imprisoned in their rural house even after their father's death, the four grow into a tormented old age. Milly, the narrator, recalls events from their youth and relates the decayed routines they follow after more than 60 years have elapsed, weaving an ever more nightmarish tale. Querulous older sister Aggie and younger twins Ellen and Esther (invariably called Ellenanesther because of their inseparability) have, like Milly, been scarred forever by the suicide of their warm and once-worldly mother, who, after years of being battered by her husband, drowned herself during the girls' childhood; by the cruelty of their father; and by their almost total isolation. A profusion of gothic elements--illegitimate conceptions; incest; concealed murder; a freak kept hidden in a cellar--is kept in place by Glaister's careful narrative structure and her empathy for Milly. (May)