Book Review: DEVIL HOUSE by John Darnielle
John Darnielle’s Devil House was not what I expected. But that’s not a bad thing—it’s actually one of the things I loved most about it.
Having read and wholly enjoyed his stellar debut, Wolf in White Van, I knew Darnielle writes character-centric stories centering on existential crises and questions, sometimes tinged with or dancing around aspects of speculative fiction, and with a style and voice all his own. So I went into Devil House expecting some sort of horror-tinged story about a true crime writer wrought through Darnielle’s idiosyncratic lens, and I wouldn’t be surprised if most readers went in with the same expectations—the cover alone seems to advertise that type of novel, not to mention the back jacket copy. And yes, to some extent, that’s what I got.
But that’s not the whole story. Which, as it turns out, is kind of the point Darnielle is making in Devil House.
Now, some readers may be put off by the…I wouldn’t necessarily say “bait and switch” Darnielle pulls, but it’s also not not that… I think the best way to put it is, you are in good hands—Darnielle is no hack, and he’s got something he’s trying to say, and you just need to trust him and follow along to the end. And as cliche as it may sound, if you do that, I promise you, you may not get the story you want, but you will get the story you need. And by God, did I love that story.
Darnielle leads us through a labyrinthine puzzle box centered on a true crime writer as he works on his newest book, extrapolating on his process with bits and pieces of his previous work, and even a fragment of a fictitious medieval myth, where the morality of the true crime genre as a whole—and, unexpectedly, the double standards of castle law doctrine—is picked apart brick by brick.
Devil House is a powerful, challenging, exquisitely-written novel filled with fascinating characters and an incredibly tangible sense of place and time; a novel less concerned with blood splatter and bumps in the night than it is with the sensationalization of violent crime, the moral obligations of true crime authors, and even the marginalization of the poor and mentally ill.
In short, Devil House is a novel that you’ll be thinking about long after you’ve finished the last page, and I can’t think of a better endorsement than that.
