Devil House by John Darnielle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Ahhhh, Devil House, Devil House, Devil House. I have put off reviewing this one for a while.
Y’all, I preordered the heck out of this book. From this cover, and even from the synopsis, I was getting The Amityville Horror vibes, mixed with a little Sinister, the 2012-supernatural Horror film starring Mr. Ethan Hawke.
That wasn’t what I got at all. I’m not mad about it, but if I said I wasn’t disappointed, I’d be lying.
I won’t even go about a weak attempt to summarize this story. I honestly don’t think that I can.
The book was broken into different parts and to me, each part felt like it’s own short story. Because of this, it felt extremely disjointed. There were entire sections where I was unclear as to who the narrator was.
Also, there was one part in particular, part four, I believe, that I have no freaking idea why it was included at all.
Leading up to that point, I was into it. I was finding the different sections enjoyable, but that one…dang. It kicked me out of the entire story and then it was very hard for me to start to care again.
There were glimmers of gold throughout this book, don’t get me wrong. I loved what it had to say about story telling, particularly true crime story telling. I also loved the details of Devil House itself; it’s sordid history and final chapters.
Overall, this just didn’t fit my tastes. I’m not sure if it was just too cerebral for me. I do enjoy when an author has a message, but this one would require way to much time and analysis for me to get the point, I believe.
Darnielle’s writing is quite pleasing, however, and obviously he has an incredible imagination. I would definitely be interested in picking up more from him in the future.
Finally, I will be keeping this one my shelves. I may even choose to revisit it one day.
