I read Laird Hunt’s In the House in the Dark of the Woods in 2020 and I bought it because it was described as a horrifying psychological thriller and…I guess that’s true? I wasn’t horrified. It was a psychological thriller. I’m going to go ahead and say spoilers because the book only came out in 2018, but…eh.
I had a lot of problems with this book. First of all, it was extremely confusing. Not to toot my own horn too much, but I’m pretty bright. I was never a kid who had any trouble with “book learning” and if I’m really focused on something I’m interested in, I pick it up pretty quickly. I had to reread passages in this book over and over and over again to make sure I understood them correctly. I’ve read confusing books before, but this one was just loaded with stuff that left me scratching my head upon first reading.
It was even difficult to determine the setting at first, although that was one of the easier parts to figure out. The story is set in colonial New England, and basically, a woman goes berry picking in the woods and gets lost. She finds herself in the company of three other women – Captain Jane, Granny Someone, and Eliza, to whose cottage she keeps returning.
It also becomes clear throughout the book that the narrator, who is called Goody by the women she meets, is being beaten by her husband and her son is emotionally distant from her. It also becomes clear that she is trapped in a cycle of abuse that never ends. All the characters are. Fairy-folk are stand ins for Native Americans. Hope – personified by a golden blonde girl – comes and goes. The characters are trapped in some kind of surrealist game where they willingly abuse other people by someone who controls them.
The whole thing is imagery of fairy tales and folklore and even the Bible, but to me the book fell flat. Strangeness can be fun, but after awhile it gets tiring. If I have to work that hard just to figure out what’s going on, I can’t enjoy the story. And I don’t love the whole ‘abuse’ thing as an allegory or a metaphor or whatever it was. People seem really split on this book, with lots of people singing its praises and lots of others more in line with my way of thinking.
I’m sure In the House in the Dark of the Woods is a book for someone, but it’s not a book for me.
Category Archives: folklore
In the House in the Dark of the Woods
The Wolf in the Attic
I picked up Paul Kearney’s The Wolf in the Attic by chance when I was in Barnes & Noble one day with my mom. I was attracted by the title which interested me, and by the blurb on the back which featured CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. They weren’t huge parts of the story but they did clearly inspire some of the setting and I appreciated that.
The story revolves around Anna Francis, a refugee of the Great War, in England from Greece, where her village was destroyed by (IIRC) the Ottomans. Her mother and brother were killed, and Anna and her father managed to make it to England, where Anna was bullied for being foreign so badly that she was eventually pulled out of school. Aside from her tutor, her only friend is her doll, Penelope, who Anna is aware is not real but is still acknowledged to be her best friend. Penelope is the only one Anna can talk about her homeland and her mother and brother with; her father does not want to talk about it. Her father has become involved with a political group of Greek ex-pats and has taken to heavy drinking.
With little else to do when not studying, Anna explores the house in which she lives and wanders the streets of Oxford and the surrounding countryside. She eventually meets a boy with yellow eyes in the attic and then his family in the woods – and her life takes quite the turn.
This was a historical fiction and fantasy book which I truly enjoyed, even though books like this aren’t usually my jam. Anna is a wonderful character, childlike but still smart and insightful, and her loneliness pervades the entire story. The writing was quite beautiful. I read part of the book on the train to and from New York City, and remember vividly looking out the window, startled to find I was on the Hudson River in New York, not in Oxfordshire.
The book’s ending suggested a sequel and I would not hesitate to read another of Kearney’s books, especially one featuring Anna. I absolutely look forward to this, although it will probably be even further down the line than this review as I have so many other books to read.
That said, The Wolf in the Attic was a wonderful story and I highly recommend it.
The Winternight Trilogy
Katherine Arden’s Winternight Trilogy is an adult historical fantasy series that consists of three books:
The Bear and the Nightingale
The Girl in the Tower
The Winter of the Witch
I listened to all of them in 2019, and I loved them so much that I bought them as books.
These books contained what was, by far, my favorite story of 2019 and I loved the saga so much that I cried when it was over (not a typical reaction for me).
The series centers on Vasilisa Petrovna, or Vasya, the youngest of five children in a remote Russian village. Her father is the boyar of the village (basically a lord in the Eastern European feudal system), and Vasya is the only (living) member of her family who has the ability to see creatures of Russian folklore, such as the domovoy who lives in their home, the rusalka of a lake in the forest, the bannik of the bathhouse, and Morozko, the frost king.
The story follows Vasya’s journey for personal freedom, from adolescent to young adult woman, within the confines of both her gender and her society’s values in medieval Russia. She is a likable and compelling heroine, and I *really* liked her. Per the author: “She is strong enough to embrace her differences, but she still reads as a woman of her time.” I felt alternately elated and terrible for her, as she struggled to do what was right for herself, her family, and eventually her country. The world building was impressive and immersive, and I enjoyed wandering through the forests with Vasya and Solovey.
There are also clear elements of Russian folklore and Slavic myth woven into Vasya’s tale, and I learned more about the history of medieval Russia than I ever learned in school. My favorite creature was definitely the domovoy, although I liked Morozko a lot too. There is also insight into Russian names, which I have never been able to figure out before (not that I extensively tried), but the explanations of how names work in the translation from Russian to English made this book *much* easier to understand.
In case you can’t tell, I highly recommend this novel series. You know how sometimes you leave a story feeling like you’ve been changed? I felt like that here. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I came out in love with Vasya’s world and plan to reread the series again in the not too distant future. I hope everyone else who reads it enjoys it as much as I did. I loved it.
words in scarlet ink 