Strange Houses

I have mixed feelings about this book. For one: it hooked me right away; it’s the first book I’ve read cover-to-cover in a written format in years—I’m working on a few other, longer books, but mostly I’m listening to audiobooks. And I was entertained the whole way through. So for that: four stars. But also, it’s kind of silly. For me that was actually probably a good thing; I’m not a big horror reader and I don’t like the feeling of being terrified. So the silliness reduced the initial creepiness to a tolerable level. But now that I’m done, I can’t really shake that silliness.

Within the first few chapters, Uketsu and Kurihara have apparently figured out the absurd scenario at the center of this all, with basically no mistakes. The scenario is silly and far-fetched, and there are so many other ways to read these house plans—sinister ways, even—that the fact that they supposedly got it just right is bothersome.

I’ll say this, though: if it was the author’s intent to leave people theorizing, they’ve certainly got me there. But the most satisfying theory I can come up with just feels a bit too far from any possible author’s intent, or at least any well-written plot: that the whole thing presented by the two women was a fabrication, simply to satisfy the curiosity of these people who were investigating, by engaging the theories they had published in the newspaper; sending them in the wrong direction, and wrapping it up with a bow. In that way, they engaged these silly, paranoid delusions, and threw them off the scent of any number of much simpler criminal conspiracies. We never meet either of the children supposedly at the center of this plot, nor even their mother. They’re conveniently in hiding by the end of it all. The loose end this leaves is the neighbor, but I suppose that could just be one more person sent to shore up the story.

All of this is why I have to give this book a decent rating: despite the many flaws that can be pointed out, in the end, I was engaged and it’s kept me thinking about it since.

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