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.
Tag Archives: genre: horror/terror
In the House in the Dark of the Woods
The Dark Half
The Dark Half is a horror novel by Stephen King, I think maybe writing as Richard Bachmann at the time. Bachmann was a penname of King’s during the 1970s and 1980s. It’s one of two books by him I read in 2019 (the other being Pet Sematary).
The story opens with Thad, an author and recovering alcoholic, living somewhere in Maine. Ludlow, I want to say. Thad’s books aren’t very successful, they’re a dense literary fiction, fairly cerebral, and he finds success under the penname George Stark, writing crime novels about a psychotic killer.
When it becomes known that George Stark is actually Thad, Thad and his wife stage a phony funeral at the local cemetery that attracts a bunch of attention, including from People magazine. I can’t remember exactly why they decided to get rid of Stark. I think it was because Thad became kind of a shitty person while writing as George (drinking heavily and chain smoking and being a general nasty piece of work) and with people discovering Thad was George, he didn’t need George so much anymore.
Well, as things usually go in horror stories, George did not stay dead. He emerges from the graveyard with a physical body and equipped with the “personality” Thad gave him while he was writing as George. George goes on a killing spree (like the psychopath Thad wrote about in his crime books), killing everyone associated with his death, including the author of the People magazine article, Thad’s editor, etc… George is not a very nice guy. The murders are investigated by Alan Pangborn, the sheriff of Castle Rock (and one of King’s recurring characters). Thad has alibis, and doesn’t much want to answer questions, but his fingerprints and recordings of his voice are found at the scene, and Pangborn believes Thad is guilty of the murders, he just isn’t sure how.
Anyway, after Thad realizes he and Stark have a mental bond and realizes his twin children also have mental bond, he and Pangborn figure out that Thad had a twin reabsorbed in utero, and that this parasitic twin was removed from Thad’s brain as a child. (Gross, y’all). So the question becomes if Stark is a malevolent spirit separate of Thad, or Thad manifesting an alternate personality? And who would win?
I love pseudo-psychology/scientific stories like this. They’re fun and ridiculous, and this was no exception. In addition to being a horror book, it was also something of a whodunit, which are one of my favorite types of stories, and it kept me very interested as I pulled up carpeting and painted my new home (before moving in). As with many of King’s books, I was left feeling rather creeped out and thankful I didn’t have a twin (at least none that I know of). *shudders*
The Grip of It
Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It was a psychological thriller/horror book that was favorably compared to the likes of The Haunting of Hill House and that’s mostly why I picked it. It wasn’t a bad book, exactly, it just…wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be, I guess.
Julie and James are a young married couple who move into a house “between the forest and the ocean” because they need to get away from the city where they lived. James is basically a gambling addict and unable to control himself, so they leave to “start over” in the country with no money. As someone raised on the east coast of the United States for my whole life, I LOL’d at this. Where did you get a house by the ocean you can afford with no money, exactly? Please let me know, I’d like to move there.
Anyway, after they move in, the weirdness cranks up. The cute (if old and in need of some cosmetic work) house they bought seems to start rotting from the inside out, with strange stains appearing on the walls and the water inexplicably contaminated with filth. I will say that Jemc does a good job of building atmosphere here. The language is good and the house is claustrophobic and undeniably creepy. There are rooms within rooms (hello, House of Leaves) and the feeling that the house is haunted pervades throughout the novel, with hauntings happening to everyone but very much centered on the main characters. In desperately searching for the source of the house’s unexplained decay and their increasing psychological and physical torment, we end up following the couple as they get to know their weird neighbors and search for information on the house’s mysterious previous owners.
There are two places Jemc falls short here, though, and they’re fairly major flaws: the couple themselves, Julie and James, are flat, boring, and what personality they do have is rather unlikeable. This is a pretty major flaw if you’re trying to get a reader to sympathize with them. The second place this novel fails is with the resolution, in that there is none. There’s an element in many psychological horror books that leaves a lot up to the reader, but this book has literally no resolution to anything. The couple just picks up and moves out of the house. I don’t know how they managed this with no money either, but when one of the narrator’s mysterious bruising matches the weird wall stains and you never get a clue as to why, common place mysteries like “how are you buying and selling homes with no money?” take a backseat.
I’d give this book 2.5 of 5 stars, if I was using a star rating. The atmosphere and language I enjoyed, but the characters and plot fell really flat.
The Fisherman
I picked up John Langan’s The Fisherman when I was living in Nyack, New York because it was in the “local interest” section of the Barnes & Noble in the Palisades Mall.
There aren’t a ton of horror novels that take place in upstate New York, but I found one.
It was pretty good.
The novel takes place over a course of three parts and is presented as a memoir of our narrator, Abe. In Part 1, ‘Men Without Women,’ Abe marries Marie who dies, about a year and a half after their marriage, of breast cancer. Abe is naturally devastated, but eventually pulls himself out of his depression and burgeoning alcoholism when he wakes up one day with a strong desire to go fishing. Fishing is how he eventually processes Marie’s death and is able to go back to work in a functioning manner.
As the years pass, one of Abe’s co-workers, Dan, also loses his wife and children. His wife and twin toddlers are killed instantly when they’re hit by an 18 wheeler that runs a stop sign. Abe strikes up a friendship of sorts with Dan, and they go fishing most weekends, sharing a bond of grief they don’t really speak about.
Eventually, Dan suggests they try a new fishing spot – Dutchman’s Creek in the Catskill mountains. On the way up, they get caught in a torrential rain and stop at a diner, where a short-order cook (a thinly disguised version of HP Lovecraft) hears their destination and advises them against going. Part 2 of the book – ‘Der Fischer’ – tells the history of Dutchman’s Creek. This is where the story gets really bizarre, in the way most horror stories are bizarre. Using the technique of a story within a story, we go from the present day to the early 20th century, where we are presented with a tale that includes zombies, an immortal sorcerer, water nymphs, a cursed grimoire, disgraced academics, a heroic fellowship of men, and last but certainly not least, an ancient primordial monster lurking below the waves of a vast, black ocean (leviathan).
Part 2 of the story takes up the most space but to me it was the most interesting part.
So, Abe and Dan decide to continue on to Dutchman’s Creek, in spite of the warnings of the short-order cook. This is a horror story, afterall. Part 3, ‘On the Shores of the Black Ocean,’ is where these two narratives converge and goes on to address the consequences afterwards. I won’t ruin it for you, as this is a pretty decent payoff and the book isn’t that old.
This is the sort of book that is about one thing but is really about something else. This book is a book about grief, and how people deal with it and go on to use it to continue their lives after a devastating loss. Abe uses his grief as a force to transform his life. Dan stews in his with a horrific result. It reminded me, in this sense, of the movie ‘The Babadook.’
I enjoyed this book, but I can see why not everyone would. It’s a character study as much as a horror novel, and it does have a rather slow build up and is very psychological in many ways. That said, I really enjoyed it, especially as I knew the local geography. I recommend it highly, if you like this kind of story. It was interesting, well done, and very suspenseful.
Escape From Asylum
Madeleine Roux’s Escape From Asylum was described as a “terrifying prequel to her Asylum series.”
I did not find it terrifying. It was disturbing, though. It was another YA novel but I overlooked it, considering it was supposed to be very scary. Again, disturbing yes, scary no. (The only YA novel I’ve found scary thus far was The Monstrumologist.)
Psychiatric hospitals have a special place in the American psyche (no pun intended). People were sent there for all kinds of reasons, even those who didn’t belong there and were frequently subjected to brutal, cruel experiments under the guise of “treatment,” which is sort of what happens here.
In this story, it seems pretty obvious that Ricky didn’t belong in an asylum. He was a kid who got into some trouble, not an honest to God sick person or a criminal or whoever else they committed there. His stepfather, who clearly dislikes him, has him committed with the complicity of his mother who, Ricky thinks, would let him come home if he could just talk to her. He isn’t like the other patients – there’s a man who thinks he can fly (sick) and a woman who killed her husband (criminally insane).
Unfortunately, Ricky’s time seems short when the (psychopathic) warden decides to enroll Ricky in his program that will not just “cure” him but will “perfect” him. Ricky decides he needs to escape immediately, and with the help of sympathetic nurse and a fellow patient, he sets his plans into motion.
I don’t really remember much about what happened at the end of this story, except that Ricky turns out to be gay, and I can’t exactly remember if that’s why he was sent to the asylum, or if he did something where I said, “Wow, he’s not really innocent.” I seem to recall the latter.
What I do recall is the feeling of horror when I realized the warden was experimenting on his guests, for lack of a better term. I should have honestly seen that coming, what else could be happening at an asylum like this? Much like the revulsion we feel when we watch what doctors used to do to asylum patients in documentaries, I felt that with this book. The claustrophobia, the feeling of helplessness and inevitability. The atmosphere was good.
But the story didn’t make me want to read more of the ‘Asylum’ series, and so I probably won’t. It wasn’t a bad book, it just wasn’t good enough to make me want to read more.
House
House is a very disappointing supernatural/horror story by Frank Peretti and Ted Dekker.
The premise is a really good one: a couple experiencing marital difficulties, on a road trip through the middle of nowhere in Alabama, find themselves stranded on the side of the road with their tires blown out. They find a big Victorian house not far away and are let in by the owners, where another couple, also experiencing car trouble, stay. Unfortunately, the owners and guests are locked in by a mysterious psychopath named White, who issues an ultimatum: they’ll be allowed to leave if one of the group is dead by dawn. If not, White will kill all of them. Or something like that.
Sounds promising, but it didn’t turn out like I had hoped.
Unfortunately, I didn’t know going in that Peretti and Dekker were writers of Christian fiction. There was a lot of people trusting in God and in each other and rediscovering their love to save themselves and all that boring nonsense. Maybe it could have been more successful with a lighter touch, but the “lessons” were really heavy handed. Plus, the ending didn’t entirely make sense, and the whole mystery of who White is was never solved. I googled later, and apparently this was supposed to take place in the same universe as some of their other stories, where I guess you get to learn more about the antagonist (who became, immediately, the most interesting part of the story and was never elaborated on).
All in all, it wasn’t the worst book I ever picked up, but I certainly am in no rush to read more stories by these guys. Thanks but no thanks, boring Christian novelists.
Apparently this bizarre and disappointing book was also made into a film for some reason. I read the synopsis of the film. It looks even worse than the book. Wild.
Meddling Kids
Edgar Cantero’s Meddling Kids was one of my favorite books in 2018. In fact, it might be one of my favorite books ever.
In a Scooby Gang meets Lovecraft adventure of horror and comedy, four former child detectives and a descendant of their faithful weimaraner – an equally faithful weimaraner – take another look at their last case which, due to the bizarre nature of the case, one of them still cannot believe was simply a guy in a mask.
Andy, who convinces the others to reinvestigate, pinpoints that case as the trigger that destroyed their lives, haunted by the memories of their nights out in the forest. Andy is a tomboy, now butch lesbian, with a criminal record wanted in several states. Kerry, child genius and would be biologist – is plagued by nightmares, unable to finish college, and descending into alcoholism. Nate (the nerd) checks himself into and out of mental institutions, and Peter (the Golden Boy) becomes a successful Hollywood actor until he takes his own life not long after Kerry starts college. Peter now manifests as a hallucination that only Nate can see and hear.
As a devoted Scooby Doo fan, there was no chance that I wasn’t going to read this book. As a less devoted Lovecraft fan, there was no chance that I wasn’t going to read this book. And as a not devoted but totally remembers reading the stories Nancy Drew fan, there was no chance that I wasn’t going to read this book.
If you’re looking for a logical detective story, you’re not going to find it here. What you will find is a tale of broken people who reunite to unbreak themselves, just a little bit. In spite of the fact that you’re basically dealing with three broken people, a telepathic dog, and broken hallucinated person, this book is fun and funny. I laughed out loud quite a few times.
I don’t think this book is for everyone. This book draws heavily on those child detective stories we all read as kids, as well as Scooby Doo, and it draws a lot from the Cthulhu mythos. If you don’t like any of those things, it’s probably not a book for you, as those things don’t seem to be for everyone. Cthulhu especially doesn’t seem to appeal to a lot of people, and a lot of younger people don’t seem to be all that familiar with it. It just feels like a lot of people aren’t going to get the book because they’re not going to be familiar with its brilliant campiness and nostalgia.
Put another way: if you only like watching Scooby Doo, you probably won’t like this book. People never fail to amaze me in that they went into a book expecting to read a novel length version of Scooby Doo, this isn’t what it was, and they hated it. DUH, you idiots, it was never supposed to be a novelized version of Scooby Doo.
One of the biggest complaints I’ve seen leveled at the book is that the writing was all over the place. It was, but I took at least some of that to be part of the point. And anybody who has read The Supernatural Enhancements knows Edgar Cantero does weird stuff like that. I didn’t love The Supernatural Enhancements because the story was meh and I expected more. I felt like I got exactly what I expected here.
I saw one or two people complaining the story was transphobic but I missed that. I’m always a bit hesitant to label people “phobes” anyway and overall I’m usually an insensitive cow, but I feel like transphobic here was a leap. I don’t assume trans people are evil because of this book. I never did anyway, but here we are.
Anyway, I recommend this book highly, even though I know a lot of people aren’t going to like it, and honestly…I don’t care. It was good, nostalgic, campy fun and totally in line with what I expected from Cantero and from a book inspired by a cartoon, a horror author, and some detective books. It’s not a novelization of Scooby Doo.
Oh, and it is most definitely not a kids book.
The Monstrumologist
Guys. The Monstrumologist was a YA book by Rick Yancey.
I can’t believe they let people under 14 read this book. As a 30 year old, this book scared the shit out of me, and I’m no stranger to horror books.
The story follows Will Henry, the orphaned assistant of Dr. Pellinore Warthrop, who specializes in the study of monsters. Warthrop also employed Will’s father, James. It is revealed that Will’s father had some kind of parasite in him that Will also has, that Warthrop helped him manage. The novel takes place in the 1880s in an alternate version of New England – clearly there are monsters in this America. Think Supernatural but without the humor and brotherly bond to make you feel better about things.
Will and Warthrop eventually end up hunting a pack of Anthropophagi. Anthropophagi are cannibal monsters (as it turns out they were imported by Warthrop’s father, also a Monstrumologist) decades previously. In order to stop the Anthropophagi, Warthrop enlists the help of Jack Kearns, who is fantastic at killing things. As the story goes on, it becomes clear that Kearns is a sociopath but is very good at his job, and this is typically why he is tolerated by Warthrop, although the two men are similar in certain ways.
I got through this story as an audiobook, and maybe that was part of the reason the effect was so chilling. Everything about this story freaked me out – the claustrophobic atmosphere of Warthrop and Will’s house and lives, the choice of monster, the fate of the sea captain Warthrop and Will visit, the location of the Anthropophagi den, Kearns identity…the whole thing combined into one of the most terrifying books I ever read.
It freaked me out so much that I’ve yet to finish the series, and I’m usually committed to a series if I liked the first book. I did like it. It did it’s job, and scared the shit out of me. I read the general synopsis of the series and I just know the whole thing is going to get worse. I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. It just bothered me too much.
If I’d read this at a kid I’d have had nightmares for months. I had a couple of nightmares as a 30 year old.
If you want to read a real horror book, this is it. It doesn’t matter that it’s YA. I don’t know if other people found it as scary as I did, but to me, this book was scary AF.
The Darkest Part of the Forest
Holly Black was an author I hit hard in 2018. Not as hard as Stephen King or Bill Bryson, but still pretty hard for me (3 books).
This was the second Holly Black book I listened to, again, mostly at the gym.
I will say that it was under the Stephen King umbrella of supernatural/fantasy/horror, although this book was definitely less horror and more fantasy.
This was my favorite of Black’s books. Hazel and Ben, her brother, live in a town where the humans and fae live in close proximity. In the woods is a glass coffin where a boy with horns has been asleep for as long as anyone can remember. Then he wakes up.
Black has a knack for capturing the tumultuous inner lives of teenagers, and anyone who does a decent job of making teenagers anything other than just angsty whiners is a hero in my opinion. I’ve just read so much teenage angsty garbage that when I find characters that do more than this, I really appreciate it.
The story is a complex mix of fairy magic and a damsel-in-distress-with-a-twist story. Hazel’s relationships with her brother Ben, and another teenager named Jack, and with herself are basically the defining narratives here, that all combine to solve the mystery of what’s terrifying the people in town and how to stop it.
I liked Hazel, although she was a bit of a sociopath. Kids killing creatures – even non-human creatures – with delight always freaks me out a little. That said, children’s sense of justice is frequently much more black and white than an adult’s.
To illustrate: when I was a very small child in playgroup, a girl bit me. I was wearing a thick sweater, and still had teeth marks and a huge bruise on my arm. Also there were apparently no just consequences for this in my little mind. The girl wasn’t really “punished” (and again we were about two years old). My parents did as parents do – parenting. They tried to explain that sometimes kids do things wrong and it’s not nice to bite and the girl didn’t mean to hurt me, and I should forgive her etc… apparently I spent the time until the next playgroup saying “Not nice to bite?” and my parents would say “Yes, not not nice to bite.” Then, at the next playgroup, I apparently waited on a chair for that girl to run by, pulled her up by her hair, shook her around and yelled “NOT NICE TO BITE!” at her.
I don’t remember any of this, but I know myself well enough now to know that sounds like something Toddler!Kristine would do. VENGEANCE.
I didn’t love Black’s technique of going between the past and the present to reveal Hazel’s character. It felt a bit contrived, something to draw out the plot and prevent the reader from getting these pieces of the puzzle too soon, but without a real reason for doing it.
The story, though, was fun and well paced and there were some twists to keep me guessing, even if there was a bit of teenage angst that slowed things down here and there.
Overall, I liked The Darkest Part of the Forest. Would recommend.
Vlad
Vlad was a novella by Carlos Fuentes that I didn’t enjoy much, but a lot of other people seemed to really like it.
Set in Mexico City, our star vampire is once again on the lookout for a new place to call home, and Yves Navarro, a respected attorney, and his wife, a real estate agent, become trapped in his web.
This was a shorter book than others I read that year and while I liked the vampire storyline, some of the other aspects made me feel…gross. I suppose the vampire legend in the Dracula form is gross all the way around – an undead man runs around praying on young girls. Ew.
I read a review of this book a long time ago that stuck with me on Fuentes’s social commentary through this story. I’ll leave it here:
This was an okay story. Didn’t love it. It was short, and I thought that was great.
words in scarlet ink 