Starling House

Starling House is greatly concerned with stories and the ways in which they are told, yet the characters in the novel are often equally interested in who is telling a version of a story and what their ulterior motives might be. For example, Opal is told several distinct stories about Starling House and its Wardens, and she also hears several tattered rumors from the various citizens of Eden. As she struggles to discern the truth that lies beneath the stories and rumors, Opal eventually realizes that multiple versions of a story can be equally true in their own ways. Though the first two stories of Starling House (Bev’s version and Calliope’s version) present the characters in vastly different ways, Opal recognizes that both stories represent truths told from very different angles. The people who believe the first story viewed the Gravelys as the unlucky victims of Eleanor’s evil actions, and Opal believes this version as well before she learns that the brothers made much of their fortune from the labor of enslaved people. This knowledge inevitably tarnishes the sanitized version of Gravely history that the Gravely family itself has spread throughout the town, emphasizing the long-held truism that history is written by the victors in any given situation.