Devil House by John Darnielle
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I don't know where to begin...

Part of the problem is that this book carries with it the baggage of all of Darnielle's previous works, all of which I've read. While I enjoyed his first two books, his last one, Universal Harvester, left me with a feeling of deep mistrust. I read the book very quickly, I think in a day or two, and throughout it had a nice sense of foreboding and dread, and tension was building, but then... nothing happened.

The book was so disappointing for me, I wasn't planning on reading Devil House at all, but then I received a signed copy as a gift so I felt compelled to give it a chance. But this was early in the year so I set it aside for September.

I know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but I love that retro cover. That combined with the title makes it sound like a 70s horror novel that could have been listed in Grady Hendrix' Paperbacks from Hell. All of this was in the books favor, but I still felt reservations about reading it once fall rolled in. Meanwhile, Darnielle's band The Mountain Goats release their latest album Bleed Out and it's great. But even this is surprising to me since I've felt let down by his last few albums. Sure, there's always at least a couple of songs I enjoy on every recording, but that's it. It's been that way for the past ten years since the release of Transcendental Youth. That was the last album that I thoroughly loved and listened to over and over again. I never got into Beat the Champ and everything that followed usually only had three or four decent songs, the rest just weren't memorable. Much like Devil House, I wasn't planning on getting Bleed Out, but I loved the concept and the cover and decided to take a chance. And for once, there are two songs I'm not as into, but the rest of the album is so much fun and really gels for me. I love it.

So I'm listening to Bleed Out, really digging the most of the songs, especially Hostages and Make You Suffer and despite my reservations, it feels good to be sitting down with Devil House, a feeling I wasn't expecting.

And it's September, the pre-spooky season, not yet Halloween, but a time to work up to it which I usually do with some Agatha Christie murder mysteries or other lighter horror if you will.

To my surprise, I start Devil House and realize that this might be, in some small sense, a murder mystery. Based on the title and cover, I was expecting this to possibly delve into some supernatural, but tha'ts not the case at all. In fact, I know nothing about the subject of this book other than the title so I'm going in completely blank.

As I begin, it's a little slow going, but it's pleasant enough. I'm not rushing through it, but reading a little every day and I'm getting into it. Then, about 250 pages in (out of 400), there's a bit of a reveal that's big enough it feels like -- that's it. That's the end of the mystery and it feels (knowing Darnielle) that we won't ever really know what happened in Devil House one afternoon when two murders took place. We won't know which of our main characters did it because there's a sudden intro of a new character that almot makes no sense. But whatever, that's not the point. The mystery will remain forever unanswered, but there's still 150 pages to go so now it's going to be about the characters and their journey (including our narrator) of the events and as I read on, that seems to be the case. Until I get to the last section of the book.

Suddenly, we're thrust into the POV of a completely new character, a childhook friend of the narrator's. Now this isn't the first shift of POV, we've had several long sections of second person POV (a very unusual choice), but it still feels like we're seeing events through the eyes of our protagonist. So this was initially disorienting since we're not reading about someone who knew our narrator as a child, but hasn't seen them in years. They meet and discuss the author's latest project, Devil House, and the author lends him an early draft of a manuscript.

As our new narrator reads Devil House (the manuscript), I start getting this worried feeling that there's yet to be a surprise, but this late in the book, I have a horrible feeling it's not going to be organic to what's come before, it's not going to--well--work!

And it doesn't. It doesn't work at all!

I was so annoyed I almost wanted to throw the book against the wall. The ending is so terrible that, as a reader, I felt cheated. I felt as though I wasted my time reading a 400 page book in which the author, in trying to avoid all clichés, almost makes the biggest one of all -- coming close to the, "it was all just a dream" cliché of every teenager's early writing.

I'm not sure which is worse, this or Universal Harvester. It's been five years since I read the latter so my memory has faded. However, after reading Devil House, I'm closing the door on any future books by Darnielle. I'm not saying I'll never read anything by him again. I'm not closing the door forever, but it's going to take a lot to budge it open because that ending was bullshit.

My final takeaway is this -- go listen to Bleed Out by The Mountain Goats. You'll save time and have more fun.


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