Devil House by John Darnielle

​I was really looking forward to reading this book. Yet for some reason it took me a while to get to. And having read it, now I’m thinking maybe I was right in putting it off.
But the initial appeal – the awesome retro style cover, the fact that the author’s previous book was pretty great, the plot summary – was so there. Two days and 416 pages later I wanted my time back. Why? Well…
First and foremost, this book is overwritten. Dramatically indulgently so. It’s the sort of story that makes perfect sense to the author, but the way he takes his readers there is so convoluted, so meandering, so serpentine that by the end of the journey you’re mostly exhausted into indifference. And lamentably, the end of the journey is so underwhelming, that it doesn’t even seem worth the trip at all.
The basic story of a true crime writer moving into the place where crimes occurred to write his next bestseller and becoming obsessed with it, blurring the reality and fiction, it great. But the perspective shifts are tiresome. Also, a good reminder of why I don’t care for true crime as a genre – it’s so sensationalist, so prurient, so loaded with presupposition and speculation. Was this book meant to satirize it? Who knows. For all I know, this book was meant to be a sleeping aid. It’s certainly effective at that.
The sad thing is that Darnielle is such a talented writer. If you just focus on writing in this story. If you can do that somehow. If you can ignore things, like random Arthurian-style legends popping up. If you can ignore how blatantly self-aware Darnielle seems to be of his writing skills and how indulgent he is with it. The endless sentences, the endless paragraphs, the narrative so dense you need a machete to get through. The substance here ends up all but obscured by the padding. The trees take over the forest. It’s a muddle and a slog and a labor to get through.
And so, despite the awesome cover and despite the praises, I definitely wouldn’t recommend it and I definitely didn’t think it was worth the time. It’s the sort of book that ends up a critical darling, especially when a serious source (New York Times or the like) wants to feature a work of speculative fiction, but there is a striking difference between literary and overwritten and this sizable tome lands heavily on the overwritten side of the fence. Overstylized, overdone, messy. Very disappointing. Nowhere as scary as it is marketed. Nowhere as thrilling as it thinks it might be. Slow, slow, slow. Pass.