In
the House in the Dark of the Woods
by Laird Hunt [currently available only in e-book form on Overdrive]
by Laird Hunt [currently available only in e-book form on Overdrive]
“I told my man I was off to
pick berries and that he should watch our son for I would be gone some good
while. So away I went with a basket”….
So begins ‘In the House in the Dark
of the Woods,’ a kind of colonial American ‘Alice in Wonderland’ for adults.
It’s about a woman who enters the woods and doesn’t return for a long time
because she has a string of adventures: violent, horrific adventures with a
small cast of characters who all seem to want her to side with their own
schemes against the others. The voice of this book comes off as naive at first,
but its simplicity of observation layered on top of the wild happenings makes
for a delightfully weird reading experience.
When I read this book, I kept
thinking about how it was written by a man despite how deeply it is about being
a woman. I don’t mean sexist stereotypes of being a woman, but the sort of
self-satisfaction and willpower that patriarchy has feared for so long,
including in historical New England.
Recommended for readers who love
psychological suspense, horror, historical fiction, fairy tales, and reading
about what happens when someone who is already an adult comes of age again.
[
publisher’s official The House in the Dark of the Woods web site ] | [ official Laird Hunt Twitter feed ]
Have you read this one? What
did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide website. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month. Click the tag for the reviewer's name to see more of this reviewer’s recommendations!
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