Synopsis:
EXCITING OPPORTUNITY:
Caretaker urgently needed. Three days of work. Competitive pay. Serious applicants ONLY.
Macy Mullins can’t say why the job posting grabbed her attention—it had the pull of a fisherman’s lure, barbed hook and all—vaguely ominous. But after an endless string of failed job interviews, she’s not exactly in the position to be picky. She has rent to pay, groceries to buy, and a younger sister to provide for.
Besides, it’s only three days’ work…
Three days, cooped up in a stranger’s house, surrounded by Oregon Coast wilderness.
What starts as a peculiar side gig soon becomes a waking nightmare. An incomprehensible evil may dwell on this property—and Macy Mullins might just be the only thing standing between it, and the rest of humanity.
Follow the Rites…
Follow the Rites…
Follow the Rites…
Review:
When Marcus Kliewer all but barrelled onto the scene in September of last year with “We Used To Live Here,” I wondered how on earth anybody was meant to follow that up. I’m happy to tell you though that Kliewer is no one hit wonder, proved with interest by his latest “The Caretaker,” being as uncanny, unnerving and as utterly stressful as its predecessor. Jordan Peele’s “Us,” meets “Old Country,” by Matt and Harrison Query in this sinister little number of a novel, which will have your stomach sinking, heart racing (at approximately 151 bpm) and your palms sweating in a neat 300 pages. Even the spaces between each word feel hostile. As bleak as it is visceral, and with buckets of atmosphere to spare, “The Caretaker,” is already slated for an adaptation and is out from Bantam books April 23rd in the UK and Atria (12:01 Books) April 21st in the US- read with the lights on if you must, just make sure you follow the rites.
We follow Macy Mullins, who following the sudden death of her father, and an incident at her old barista job, is strapped for cash. With an eviction notice looming, and her younger sister Jemma developing a shoplifting habit, she needs a payslip or a miracle- bad. This is how, one craigslist ad later, she ends up house-sitting for Grace Carnswel. Nine grand for 3 days may seem rather ludicrous for merely existing indoors, but David, Grace’s late husband left behind some rather detailed, albeit deranged, instructions to be followed precisely, and really who is Macy to disrespect the deathbed wishes of a dying man? Especially when such instructions pay so well. But when strange things start to happen, Macy must face the possibility that the rites are not just rantings but precautions against something big and terrifying, and that this sidegig involves responsibility on a cosmic scale.
I put together a haunted house reading guide over on my instagram last week, and whilst my intention from the beginning was to demonstrate what a versatile trope the haunted house is and continues to be, after, I felt that even more strongly. “The Caretaker,” has no baroque theatrics or clanking chains and it could not be further away from Amityville if it tried. The house itself feels rather indifferent, it does not leer or lunge, it’s not particularly hungry or offensive, it’s just tenure. An obligation. I would be lying to you if I said I didn’t raise an eyebrow when I first heard Kliewer was following up his wildly successful debut haunted house novel, with… another haunted house novel, and “The Caretaker,” and “We Used to Live Here,” do also share similar themes- notably grief and the psyche under stress- but Kliewer’s latest does not read like a reheated victory lap, I’m happy to report.
The first half of this novel definitely felt like a slowburn, which for the record does not equate to the first half of the novel being boring– that is daft and a personal gripe of mine, I do apologise. Anyway, instead we’re left to sit with this intense uncanniness for quite a long while, bask in the wrongness of the Brooksview Heights and the situation that Macy has found herself in. There’s a certain humming off frequency that Kliewer seems to have already mastered- I’m not bitter about it or anything. This frequency builds and builds in the first 100 pages, throughout which dread accumulates and our sense of what is permissible begins to shift. Things do get explosive in the second half of this novel, and following such mounting unease, it’s all the more effective for it. Kliewer’s writing itself, like in his debut, is pacey, with lots of haunting refrains and passages that reflect the deteriorating mental state of our protagonist. The pages certainly turn.
A wildly imaginative, psychological, lean and contemporary take on the haunted house that is cold to the touch, “The Caretaker,” by Marcus Kliewer is an intensely gripping read and a beautiful follow up to “We Used To Live Here,” compared to which it is no less ambiguous- gorgeous in its restraint and vicious in its implications. In conclusion, I am never house-sitting for nobody ever again.
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