Synopsis:
To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”
When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the same question, over and over . . . Bela understands that unless she says yes, soon her family must pay.
Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is on the brink of unravelling.
But Other Mommy needs an answer.
Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror told by the child Bela. A story about a family as haunted as their home.
Review:
Home is where the heart is…
A phrase that typically generates feelings of comfort and safety in us all, Josh Malerman’s latest novel ‘Incidents Around the House’ flips this on its ice-cold head in deeply sinister fashion. Malerman wields the tired and over-rehearsed haunted house story and strips it clean, taking components and moulding them into something entirely original and completely terrifying. ‘Incidents’ is a whirlwind of a novel that plainly examines childhood innocence and its battle to cope in a world plagued and withered by its own shortcomings.
The story is written from the perspective of Bela, our 8-year-old protagonist, and the form and format of the novel is reflective of her age and maturity. Bela’s thoughts and reflections, like that of any child, are often short and snappy, and this coupled with the well-spaced formatting of the book allows the book to be read at breakneck pace. There is no escaping this rollercoaster-ride of a story until its bitter end. Overall, I thought that Malerman did a great job characterising Bela. Her thoughts and verbiage felt befitting of a girl her age; a bubbly and intelligent girl, but also a naïve girl.
It is Bela’s naivety that allows for terror to thrive.
The crux of the novel is of course ‘Other Mommy’, a spectral presence that haunts Bela wherever she goes, asking Bela to let them into Bela’s heart. For me the relationship between Bela and Other Mommy was undoubtedly the most disturbing aspect of the novel. I could not help but read Other Mommy through the lens of them being a predator, and their relationship with Bela as a type of grooming. Other Mommy befriends Bela in its attempts to get what it wants, and Bela, too young to know differently, is never 100% averse to, in her eyes, simply having a friend. Other Mommy is constant in her manipulation of Bela to try and get what she wants, a scenario bound to fill the hearts of any unknowing parent with absolute terror.
Malerman’s novel is fascinated by liminal spaces. Think of a hallway between rooms or a stairway between downstairs and upstairs, a void with no definitive definition or meaning. Other Mommy thrives in these areas of liminality, living in Bela’s closet and disappearing through walls. Similarly, Other Mommy stands as a marker between two modes of being: floating in the long void between childhood innocence and adulthood, pulling Bela into unchartered waters too deep for her to swim in.
Indeed, like many predators, Other Mommy latches onto the vulnerable and innocent. ‘Incidents Around the House’ does not simply refer to supernaturally haunting incidents but also scenarios very much of the every-day variety for many of us growing up. Malerman highlights just how scarring it can be for a child growing up in an environment with conflict between those that they love. It is heart-wrenching to read from Bela’s perspective as she ponders and worries about her parents’ conflicts, understanding it in her own little way, but not truly comprehending what is going on. Malerman examines the impact these incidents can leave imprinted on a child, and Other Mommy in its predatory nature is the amalgamation of the very worst that childhood trauma can dreg up to punish the vulnerable.
‘Incidents Around the Novel’ masquerades as a tale of ghosts, hauntings and possessions, and then packs a punch with unexpected brute force. Malerman has perfected the art of the literary ‘jump scare’, and there are plenty of those in this novel, but where ‘Incidents’ really shines is its ability to place us in the shoes of an 8-year-old child once again, a child naïve to the darkness that sits in every corner of every room, while we are forced to watch as it creeps ever closer and closer.
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