Devil House
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
From New York Times bestselling author and Mountain Goats singer/songwriter John Darnielle comes an epic, gripping novel about murder, truth, and the dangers of storytelling.
Gage Chandler is descended from kings. That’s what his mother always told him. Years later, he is a true crime writer, with one grisly success — and a movie adaptation — to his name, along with a series of subsequent less notable efforts. But now he is being offered the chance for his big break: to move into the house where a pair of briefly notorious murders occurred, apparently the work of disaffected teens during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Chandler finds himself in Milpitas, California, a small town whose name rings a bell — his closest childhood friend lived there, once upon a time. He begins his research with diligence and enthusiasm, but soon the story leads him into a puzzle he never expected — back into his own work and what it means, back to the very core of what he does and who he is.
Devil House is John Darnielle’s most ambitious work yet, a book that blurs the line between fact and fiction, that combines daring formal experimentation with a spellbinding tale of crime, writing, memory, and artistic obsession.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this riveting metafictional epic, Mountain Goats singer-songwriter Darnielle (Universal Harvester) flays the conventions of true crime to reveal the macabre and ordinary brutality behind sensationalized stories of violence. True crime writer Gage Chandler has spent the last five years living in the "Devil House" in Milpitas, Calif., where he's been working on a book about an unsolved murder that took place there in 1986, during the height of the Satanic Panic. Interspliced with Gage's investigation are long excerpts from one of his previous books, The White Witch of Morro Bay, which recounts the gruesome end for two teenage boys who broke into their teacher's apartment. Gage's multilayered narrative of the Devil House murders slowly builds from conjecture to the victims' ventriloquized voices, lending itself well to Darnielle's themes about the artifice of the genre: "Formalities, when carefully tended, quietly congregate to make form," Gage notes. This masterwork of suspense is as careful with its sharp takes as it is with the bread crumbs it slowly drops on the way to its stunning end. It operates perfectly on many levels, resulting in a must-read for true crime addicts and experimental fiction fans alike.
Customer Reviews
Metfictional satire on true crime writing
Author
American. Songwriter, composer, guitarist, pianist, vocalist, and frequently sole member of The Mountain Goats. More recently, Mr D started writing novels, of which this is the third. I read and enjoyed his 2017 effort Universal Harvester, although individual reviewers vary widely in their opinions (as they do about the Mountain Goats.)
Plot
The protagonist Gage Chandler is a true crime writer with several titles to his credit, one of which was made into a movie. His editor comes across an item in a regional newspaper he thinks might be of interest, and encourages our boy to relocate from San Francisco to Milpitas, a small town in Santa Clara County CA, which is undergoing a real estate and population boom thanks to it being at the southern end of Silicon Valley (It ranks first in the United States with regard to the percentage of residents employed in the computer and electronic products industry, including HP, Western Digital, Teledyne, Varian, Adaptec, the list goes on.) Back in the mid-80s, two people were murdered in grisly fashion in a building that was once a diner, then a newsagency, then a porn store, which goes broke so the local kids turn it into a hideout devoted to mysticism and devil worship, as you do. Hence, the title. So anyway, our boy buys the building, which has been extensively renovated, moves in to get—dare I say it—the vibe, and to conduct his research. The locals are a little touchy given that there was a book written about a girl who was raped and murdered in Milpitas some years before the events under question, and the subsequent movie did not paint the town in a favourable light. (Quelle surprise). The second part shifts back in time to revisit our boy’s breakthrough success about a female high school teacher in a California beachside town, who kills two male students, cuts them into pieces and gets caught because of all the blood she tracks around while trying to feed the pieces to the fish in the ocean, or something like that. After that, we detour to a fantasy kingdom of the middle-earth variety, which somehow ties up with the fact that the protagonist was told by his mother he was descended from kings, or possibly not. (I got a bit lost there, so I’m guessing.) Then it’s back to the Devil House, yada, yada, the end.
Writing
Mr D writes well. His style is straightforward, and he evokes a sinister mood with the best of them. The pacing is good, and while there’s some navel gazing, it does not feel excessive. (User experience may vary.) What he’s on about, or possibly on—more likely the latter—is less clear. What is clear is that Mr D enjoyed taking the p*ss out of true crime writing, for instance, by reusing the same who-would-have-thunk-it-this-person/place-seems-so-ordinary motifs unchanged in different tales. (An innocent looking housewife stirring stew on a stove turns up word-word-word in three totally different tales of woe.)
Bottom line
Horror fans beware, which sort of goes with the territory. While the title, the cover art and the blurb suggest this should be right up your (dark bloodstained) alley, it is better classified as metafictional satire on the true crime genre, whatever that might be. (See above comment regarding the Mountain Goats.)