Book Round-Up: Haunted House Edition

 It's no secret that the horrors in ghost stories almost always serve as signifiers for the horrors in society. Beloved's ghost is the legacy of slavery,* and Dracula represents the evil of aristocracy or Victorian sexual repression (depending on who you ask). The following three novels each tackle society's ills by literalizing those ills in creepy ways.

A House with Good Bones by T. Kingfisher: In Kingfisher's contemporary Southern Gothic, the haunting Sam and her mother, Edith, are dealing with represents a legacy of prejudice and sexism disguised by good manners and polite behavior (and how easy it is for victims to become perpetrators). It's a Kingfisher novel, however, so the horror is mitigated with humor and a goofy familiar (a vulture, in this case).  

Lost Among the Living by Simone St. James: Set in England, 1921, the novel's Wych Elm House (and the protagonist) is haunted by the trauma of both mental illness and WWI. That trauma was heavy to read about, but St. James is rapidly becoming a favorite writer for her ability to combine mystery, romance, and spookiness.   

Starling House by Alix Harrow: the most explicitly horror-filled of the three, this haunted house represents not only slavery and misogyny but the ability of otherwise good people to look away rather than confront evil. This was a good story, and I appreciate how nothing played out quite like one would expect, but although the novel is not YA it read like it, especially in the behavior of the main characters and in the overwrought writing style. The latter in particular distracted from my enjoyment of the story.

*Don't get me started on the long-ago English professor who interrupted a really good discussion to ask if we thought ghosts were real.

The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow

Superficially, this novel remarkably similar to The Starless Sea -- a young woman begins finding doors to alternate worlds, and must stop the secret society determined to close those doors permanently. But the details, the themes, the writing style, even the overall feel of the book is completely different.

In Harrow's world, the doors are crucial to the health of our world, letting in ideas and sparking societal changes for the better. Hence the secret society of mostly old, white men who want to study the other worlds, make a quick buck off some artifacts, and then close them forever before they have too much of an influence on us. January (the young woman in question), however, has a connection to one of the doors, and is determined to track down her parents.

Harrow's political commentary is sometimes a little heavy-handed, but the narrative she created is rich in detail and exciting to read. Even the villain is far more interesting than one would expect. My only complaint is that I would have enjoyed exploring more of those alternate worlds; we really only got to see one of them.

The US hardcover edition is gorgeous:

 

And I couldn't resist making another necklace, inspired by both the cover and the text:

Too bad I have no place to wear it right now.