REVIEW: Incidents Around the House (book) by Josh Malerman

Incidents Around the House is horror. I bought my copy new.

Review:

At least in the print version, narration/action in this book is left-justified, dialogue is indented, and there are spaces between. The author has a note at the beginning about this being intentional, part of signaling that everything is being related from the POV of a child.

The child is eight-year-old Bela. She doesn't seem to have any friends outside her home, but she does have her Mommy, Daddo, Grandma Ruth...and Other Mommy, who lives in her closet. Or at least who used to live in her closet. Other Mommy has been coming out a lot more recently, to the point that Bela is worried her Mommy and Daddo will see her. There's also the issue of the question Other Mommy has taken to asking Bela: "Can I go into your heart?" Bela isn't quite sure what Other Mommy means by that. She's said no every time, but, considering that Other Mommy has been her friend for so long, maybe she should say yes?

It didn't take me too long to get used to how the text was set up. Adjusting to Bela constantly calling her dad "Daddo" was harder. I'm guessing it was meant to signal how close she felt to him, but it felt a bit weird, probably because I've never known any kids who call their dads that.

Overall, I thought this book was nicely creepy. At the start, there was a feeling that Other Mommy could maybe be an imaginary friend, or maybe started out that way before morphing into something else. There were times when it was hard to tell whether Bela was actually talking to her mother, or whether it was Other Mommy pretending to be her mother, hoping to get her to say yes to her question.

It was apparent early on that there were issues with Bela's parents' marriage - as much as adults like to think kids don't notice stuff, they do, and Bela's desire to keep Other Mommy hidden felt rooted in her desire to keep her family from changing. Then again, there were times when Bela mentioned Other Mommy's eyes moving lower down on her face, and she could easily have been wanting to avoid freaking her parents out.

Once Bela's parents realized that something was haunting either their house or their child, the rest was an exhausting quest, on their part, to try to free themselves and keep Bela safe. I admit to having an "oh hell, what am I about to read?" reaction to the first ambiguous mentions of their final plan. Thankfully, the plan didn't involve doing anything to Bela directly, but rather finally telling her the full truth about everything. 

I don't know that the ending was exactly a surprise, but at the same time I'd hoped for something...better? There was some ambiguity to the ending that was a little annoying, but, considering how things turned out, maybe that was for the best.