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In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt
218 pages
4/5 stars
Synopsis:
“Once upon a time there was and there wasn’t a woman who went to the woods.”
In this horror story set in colonial New England, a law-abiding Puritan woman goes missing. Or perhaps she has fled or abandoned her family. Or perhaps she’s been kidnapped, and set loose to wander in the dense woods of the north. Alone and possibly lost, she meets another woman in the forest. Then everything changes.
On a journey that will take her through dark woods full of almost-human wolves, through a deep well wet with the screams of men, and on a living ship made of human bones, our heroine may find that the evil she flees has been inside her all along. The eerie, disturbing story of one of our perennial fascinations–witchcraft in colonial America–In the House in the Dark of the Woods is a novel of psychological horror and suspense told in Laird Hunt’s characteristically lyrical prose style. It is the story of a bewitching, a betrayal, a master huntress and her quarry. It is a story of anger, of evil, of hatred and of redemption. It is the story of a haunting, a story that makes up the bedrock of American mythology, but told in a vivid way you will never forget.
In the House in the Dark of the Woods is a strange and trippy tale full of dark fairy tale elements. There is a wriggling undercurrent that leaves you unsettled and glued to the pages and reminds me quite a bit of The Witch in that regard.
Goody and Eliza speak in a convincing colonial New England dialect, which lends itself to the fairy tale-like tone the book has. There are strange people and situations that are reminiscent of a twisted Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as well. Dancing pigs, a wooden adder stone, and a flying boat made of bones are fantastical elements that are downplayed in a magical realism kind of way.
I do think that In the House in the Dark of the Woods would have been better by ending after chapter 24. The extra chapters did not add much, especially the epilogue. To take the time to explain and add details that were not helpful to the story could have been used to instead explain some of the twist, rules, or origin of the game.
All in all I think this was a fairly solid story even as it delves into a vague-yet-disturbing madness. I can see how some people had a hard time with it, but as I’m a big fan of warped tales (The Hike is one of my favorite books), I followed along quite well.