Something in the Walls
Ambiguity in horror fiction must be handled deftly to be effective. If not, the narrative dissatisfies and frustrates. Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce mixes folk horror with a dollop of the supernatural in what is predominantly a character study. Mina, the novel’s first-person narrator, is a conflicted woman. She’s soon to marry to a man with whom she is not compatible. In contrast to her, he is highly organized and science oriented. When Mina expresses her belief that a person standing behind her in one of their vacation photos is her long dead brother, her fiancé strongly encourages her to resume attending grief counseling sessions. At the venue she encounters a journalist who is having difficulty processing the loss of his young daughter. A rapport is established that goes beyond mutual sadness. Both mourners harbor feelings of guilt and share a desire to again communicate with, and be absolved by, their respective lost loved ones. Author Pearce does a good job establishing the longing and distress of the two characters and sets up a potentially intriguing premise for them to pursue their hope of connecting with the beyond: The journalist gets a juicy assignment to investigate purported occult activity centered on a disturbed teenaged girl. Having newly accredited child psychologist Mina accompany him would give the project gravitas, as well as an underlying rationale for probing the unearthly. Unfortunately, the narrative veers into a convoluted storyline. The ambiguity potential is squandered when the plot wildly deviates from the “is it ghostly or psychological?” question, rendering the narrative mired in equivocation. Which can be thought of as mismanaged ambiguity. The reader is led on baroque paths and tangents that are far afield from initially promising possibilities.
And those possibilities were ample. For instance, when Mina in her professional capacity is introduced to beleaguered and avowedly bewitched adolescent Alice, she has this to say about the girl: “She looks at me with a slow, sly smile and just for a moment I wonder if maybe there is something about her after all, some strangeness baked into her like clay. It’s in the curve of her smile, that quick flash of teeth. Like something is hiding there underneath the surface.” Ambiguity set in motion. Much later in the narrative, Alice confronts Mina about an incident on a frozen pond. Mina’s memory of the event reignites the guilt she bears: “That cracking sound again, that rift in the ice — only it’s not in the ice, it’s in me, somewhere where the blood flows thick and dark and sluggish, where secrets stagnate and grow long, fibrous roots. Bad seeds.” This self-reflection nicely establishes an ambiguous aspect of Mina’s character. Mentally haunted by disturbing memories, she may be attuned to hauntings of the otherworldly variety. Or she simply is unstable.
If the story had remained centered on the prospect of that psychological/supernatural ambiguity it could have been far less unwieldy. Instead, the author meanders. The Cornwall village, in which the bulk of the story is set, features a bevy of locals whose mercurial behavior gives one whiplash. It’s hard to sort out the enablers from the innocents in this town beset by a history of alleged witchcraft and its attendant misogyny. There seems to have been considerable time spent trying to flesh out a multitude of peripheral characters, but motivation is often incomprehensible.
Parenthetically, I was a tad perplexed that the narrative was set in 1989 for no apparent reason. Maybe choosing a time prior to internet and cell phone accessibility seemed like a plausible way to heighten a sense of isolation and tension?
Something in the Walls, published by Minotaur Books, had potential to be a much better book. Hopefully, Daisy Pearce’s next novel will be tighter and more disciplined in focus.
