The People in the Trees – A Vividly Unsettling Journey into the Mind and Land Suffused with Horror

"Gods are for stories and heavens and other realms; they are not to be seen by men. But when we encroach on their world, when we see what we are not meant to see, how can anything but disaster follow?"

Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is one of the much talked-about novels of recent times. It’s a heartbreaking tale about abuse, memory, and male friendship. The intense reading experience naturally pointed me towards Yanagihara’s debut novel The People in the Trees (published August 2013), which was actually not written in the traditional novel form. The People in the Trees unfurls as a memoir (marked with footnotes), written by the fictional Nobel Prize-winning scientist A. Norton Perina from prison after being convicted of molesting his adopted son. Surprisingly, the novel is cited as medical science-fiction, but tagging this captivating and disconcerting novel under a genre would undervalue its profound exploration of power, culture, morality, and obsession.

‘The People in the Trees’ is primarily an interesting character study of a self-serving man, embellished with power and superior intelligence, who nevertheless sees himself as a victim. I didn’t feel there was much ambiguity in Norton Perina’s ultimate intentions so as to use the word ‘unreliable narrator’. Early in the novel, Ronald Kubodera – Norton’s protege, friend and editor of the memoir – admits that he has “judiciously cut passages that I felt did not enrich the narrative or were not otherwise of any particular relevance”.  Therefore, Yanagihara doesn’t employ the unreliability of her central character to conjure cheap tricks in the end. Right from the beginning of Norton’s accounts, we find clues to his character not just through what he clearly states, but through information or emotions he deliberately chooses to withhold. We also slowly determine the hidden layers of truth behind things he depicts in an unambiguous manner.

The People in the Trees doesn’t provide thrill of a discovery as in a sci-fi thriller. Norton Perina’s rise, achievements, and eventual fall are briefly stated before immersing ourselves into his viewpoint. In 1950, Norton, shortly after graduating from Harvard Medical School, accompanies an anthropological expedition into the dense jungles of a remote fictional Micronesian island known as ‘Ivu’ ivu’. There they encounter some members of a tribe who may possess the key to attain immortality (or at least extended life). After consuming a rare species of turtle, the locals live well beyond 100 years. However, only their bodies remain energetic and youthful, whereas the minds deteriorate gradually. Norton’s thorough research and identification of this biochemical effects on the natives bestow upon him a Nobel Prize in the early 1970s. Norton’s narrative simply expands this gist mentioned earlier, providing front-row seats to witness the scientific wonder amidst lush forests and its slow-destruction due to the same factor.

Ronald Kubodera aka Ron strongly insists on the greatness of Norton’s contribution to science (although the rare species of turtle are long declared extinct and scientists failed to convert the discovery into a marketable, consumerist product).  He also calls to attention about Norton’s ‘humanitarian’ activities at the island: Norton has adopted 43 island children over the years, plucked them away from life of penury to provide them a sophisticated lifestyle at United States. One of those children, now a grown-up, has hurled an accusation of sexual abuse at Norton. What troubles Ron is how quickly they have ostracized Norton, the same people who once waited for his fleeting gaze to rest over them. Norton starts his memoir from his early life spent with farmer-father, taciturn, mentally-afflicted mother, and impressionable twin brother. His narration is a lot stand-offish and brashly unapologetic. The story picks up momentum with the incursion into remote and primitive place and painfully details Norton’s experimentation that inflict dire cultural and ecological consequences on the native population.

Hanya Yanagihara

Hanya Yanagihara was a publicity assistant in book publishing, editor at Conde Nast Traveler (a luxury and lifestyle travel magazine) before becoming a full-time novelist. Her father was a research doctor at the National Institutes of Health, which naturally would have provided her knowledge about Carleton Gajdusek, Nobel-Prize winning medical researcher, who was sent to prison for sexually abusing some of his adopted children (Gajdusek adopted more than 50 children from Papua New Guinea and Micronesia). Yanagihara took inspiration from that devastating true story and added elements of horror and marvel to ask some tough questions about the notion of ethics in the practice of science, Western cultural arrogance, and neo-colonialism. The superb quality attached with Yanagihara’s writing is her ability to juggle between the macro and micro aspects of the story. She elaborately portrays the phantasmagorical atmosphere and later laments over the sad fate of the abundantly fertile Ivu’ivu forests and its inhabitants. But at the same time, she never loses sight of the personal narrative of the genius with a crooked moral center. The author’s story-telling technique is so absorbing at times that despite the moral uncertainties surrounding Norton, we do wonder if he is just a victim of false accusation and misguided resentment.

The People in the Trees contemplate the utter inability to affix a one-word description to an individual. Nowadays, we often come across stories about famous celebrities and indisputably brilliant minds facing serious charges of sexual abuse and other crimes. So how should we assess them: by balancing their crimes at one end and their contributions to society at the other end? Should we shun the genius for his/her devilry or should we champion them, irrespective of their deliberate mistakes? Then there’s also the larger question regarding ecological and cultural sacrifices we make for this so-called, bluntly described word ‘progress’. One’s pleasure of adopting strict binary moral positions does take a sort of heavy beating after reading the novel. On the whole, Hanya Yanigahara’s distressing, multi-layered debut novel digs deep into the question of moral and cultural relativism.

Six Four – A Spellbinding and Singular Work of Crime Fiction

At its best, crime fiction can serve as the window to a nation’s cultural and emotional landscape. Wrapped within the universal themes of morality, guilt, honor, and remorse are the specificities of particular settings. A good crime literature can take us deep into the conflicting social and cultural forces of a nation that’s otherwise not proudly displayed in the tourist pamphlets. The phenomenal Scandinavian crime writing (or Nordic Noir) has exactly been doing that; immersing us in the atmospherics and ethnographic data. Japanese crime authors have long been taking readers into the undisclosed, unsavory parts of their landscape and mindscape. Keigo Higashino, Natsuo Kirino, Fuminori Nakamura, Seicho Matsumoto, Kanae Minato, etc have their own unique style in depicting the mayhem and chaos, a result of central character’s relentless pursuit for truth. Hideo Yokoyama, my recent discovery, definitely occupies a prominent place among the Japanese crime writers. But his huge door-stopper of a novel (640 pages) Six Four (translated to English by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies) neither possesses a whodunit mystery at its center nor the procedural follows fingerprints and DNA to achieve the notion of justice. It’s an entirely different kind of page-turner, one that fuels suspense and tension by navigating through labyrinths of a bureaucratic institution.

Bureaucratic offices can be a perfect setting for satirical literature. But rarely do we come across novels like Six Four which employs office spaces and their hidden political warfare to diffuse a chilling reading experience. Initially, Six Four appears to be a familiar detective story. It opens in an autopsy room. A middle-aged prefectural Inspector Mikami (working in a province, north of Tokyo) and his beautiful, vulnerable wife Minako are searching unidentified bodies ever since their teenage daughter Ayumi ran away from home. Right before we think the novel is about the mystery behind Ayumi’s disappearance, we are introduced to a 14-year-old case involving the kidnapping and murder of seven-year-old Shoko (occurred in the year 1989). The novel's title refers to this case and the kidnapper-killer was never captured. The statue of limitations is about to go into effect in a year. Mikami was one of the detectives charged with retrieval of Shoko. After years of working as detective in Criminal Investigations, he is unexpectedly transferred to Administrator Affairs and provided with the job of Press Director. One day he hopes to move back to the detective role and work with his pals at Criminal Investigations.

Nevertheless, he has done a fine job so far as the head of Media Relations, avoiding the legal strictures to trample press freedom and does his best to keep things democratic. The ‘six four’ case is first mentioned in the novel, not because the police have attained a new clue, but due to the visit of  a powerful Commissioner General from Tokyo. The higher official wants to meet the officers still investigating the case, pay respects at Shoko’s grave, meet Shoko’s agonized father Amamiya, and give an interview to the press. The Administrative Affairs head Akama – Mikami’s boss – dubs it as an effort to renew the public interest in ‘six four’ case. The issue of Mikami’s missing daughter plays a pivotal role in shaping his current volatile emotional state. At home, Minako is remote and uncommunicative. They have received silent calls few days back, which Minako insists were from Ayumi and hence she has decided to not leave the house, waiting for the call. Mikami has dizzying spells and there’s more pressure from his boss to keep an iron grip on the subject of press access.

Novelist Mr. Hideo Yokoyama

If you think Ayumi’s current predicament and nabbing of Shoko’s killer is the sole focus of Six Four, then you are mistaken. The large chunk of the novel is devoted to Mikami’s straining relationship with the press members and uncovering the hidden meaning regarding Commissioner General’s visit to the Prefectural Division. Apart from the burgeoning conflict with the press, Mikami also finds himself caught in the middle of an internecine war between Administrative Affairs and Criminal Investigations. Mikami stays ambivalent in expressing his sense of loyalty. Moreover, he learns another important detail about this organizational battle: a dangerous cover-up tracking back to the ‘six four’ case. Mikami uses his detective skills to clear through the thicket of bureaucratic red-tapes and finds quite a few perplexing truths.

Hideo Yokoyama has worked as a police reporter and desk editor before becoming a novelist. It shows in the way Yokoyama intricately establishes the relationship between the police and press and the stifling hierarchical flow within police force. The novel has a slow-burn start with the author meticulously realizing the set-up and ingeniously fleshing out the mind-boggling array of characters (I was confused with the names of multiple characters starting with letter ‘M’ -- Mikami, Minako, Mikumo, Matsuoka, Mikuri, etc.). For a casual reader seeking an edge-of-the-seat police procedural, Six Four may not work. After patiently getting through the first 100 pages, observing all the idiosyncratic cultural details and rich character sketches, we are left to confront the gradually escalating tense atmospherics. But still for a casual crime fiction order, the novel’s narrative style and length may demand a lot of attention. Six Four doesn’t contain the thrill-of-the-chase up until the riveting final phase. Mostly, the novel traps us within Mikami’s head-space as he navigates through doubts and uncertainties related to office politics. I found Mikami’s introspective journey so as to unveil the tangled threads of hierarchy and personal egos very interesting. But the same could not be said to all crime-fiction-seekers.

The book does justify its huge length. Despite that brilliant twist at the end, Yokoyama’s writing goes beyond luscious plot games. He makes us see the complex machinations of a multi-layered society from the perspective of an ordinary, ethical man. Mikami’s mental wrestling is charged with the profundity of a serious literature. The existential angst nagging our exhausted hero, which no doubt is soaked with social and cultural specificity, provides surprising universal resonance at times. So does the flawed and duplicitous nature of institutions depicted in the book: media, law, and marriage. While Yokoyama reveals the heart of darkness lurking beneath the veneer of elegance, the immensely satisfying denouement is saturated with hope.

Six Four is an exceptionally complex and insightful crime novel that demands readers’ full-attention and generously rewards them back. It subverts from the conventions of a police procedural narrative and becomes a shrewd treatise about Japan, its bureaucracy and its society. 

Us Against You – A Middling Follow-Up to the Brilliant “Beartown”

“….he learns that people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe…”

What’s so great about a Fredrik Backman novel? He delivers elegant, unparalleled insights on the fragility and strengths of human nature. That’s all.

Of course, the Swedish novelist isn’t saying anything perfectly original on this topic that philosophers, anthropologists, scientists, and artists haven’t said throughout centuries of human history. Yet the way Backman packages the truths about human condition through well-drawn, three-dimensional characters and poignant narrative evokes a kind of frenzy within the reader to finish his book ASAP. Us Against You [Beartown #2] , the sequel to the author’s much acclaimed ‘Beartown’, is no different. It has all the ebbs and flows of a good fiction. There’s also a third book in works to form the ‘Beartown trilogy’. The first question before starting up Us Against You that plagued me is, ‘why there’s a need for a sequel?’ Backman pretty much resolves most of the huge conflicts brought forth in ‘Beartown’, and even provides glowing forecast regarding our favorite characters’ future. But of course, I was not going to pass off the chance to keenly observe this fictional community, whose caustic as well as estimable qualities holds a mirror to the modern human existence.

‘Us Against You’ starts off from the summer with star-hockey player Kevin Erdahl (who raped the ice hockey team general manager Peter Andersson’s daughter Maya) moving away from the fictitious Swedish backwoods town Beartown. Maya is still vilified for saying the truth about Kevin in public (“the idiots won’t say it was Kevin who killed Beartown ice hockey; they’ll say that ‘the scandal’ killed the club.” laments Maya). Although this isolated town had lost its jobs and investments, it had a strong sense of community thanks to the hockey rink. Now the townspeople are divided over 'the scandal’. Most of the hockey players have moved to Hed hockey, Beartown’s rival team. Beartown hockey has also lost its funding and the town council has decided to only support Hed. Peter’s wilful and beloved wife Kira Andersson sees a silver-lining in the club’s decision. She thinks that it’s time to move on and take steps to achieve her career dreams.

Their family unit, however, has taken a heavy damage. Peter and Kira’s relationship is in shambles. Maya tries her best to suppress the traumatic memories with the help of her oddball best-friend Ana, but it hasn’t been easy. Twelve-year-old Leo, Peter & Kira’s youngest son, feels alone like any kid on the cusp of adolescence, although what happened to his sister has kindled a violent impulse within him. Soon, the town gets its savior, who is actually a corrupted and manipulative politician. Richard Theo, the isolated political figure in Beartown, tries to revive the town’s ice-hockey prospects and jobs. Even though the intentions seem good, Theo’s primary aim is to gain political power and oust his rivals. Hence he conceives an elaborate, sinister plan that once again sets in motion the hate, anxiety, and violent disputes. Beartown also gets a new hockey coach with no-frills attitude, Elizabeth Zackell. Her alleged homosexuality and utter lack of sense of humor raises concern in certain quarters. But all she wants to be is a hockey coach (not ‘female’ hockey coach). Two additional characters are thrown into the mix: Teemu Rinnius, the unheralded leader of the ardent hockey fans (known as ‘The Pack’ and ‘hooligans’); and his madcap younger brother Vidar Rinnius who happens to be the team’s best goal-keeper, now serving a sentence at a psychiatry institute. Benji, the brawny 18-year-old who stood up against his best friend Kevin, continues to wrestle with his gay identity. Similar to ‘Beartown’, Backman opens the tale by saying what the cumulative force of hate is going to achieve in the end: a death. Naturally, it makes us dig through the pages and wait with bated breath to find out which one of our beloved characters’ life is in threat.

‘Us Against You’ lacks the dense, organic plotting of 'Beartown' and the author’s other novels. But Backman’s storytelling technique retains the page-turning qualities, consistently tickling, hurting, jabbing us with the narrative developments. Us Against You is written to be read as a stand-alone novel, so for the first few pages the writer repeats the gist and feelings of what happened earlier. This is a minor distraction. And it would be wholly fruitless to read the sequel first without going through the flagship work. In Backman’s universe, like in ours, there are no pure evils and pure goodness. People and their actions always occupy the grey territory. So once again Backman makes good people take bad decisions and gives space for the bad ones to nurture humane gestures. Maya, Kira, Ramona, Jeannette, Adri, the story gives us array of strong female characters who often stands as the forces dispelling the climate of ill-will. As I mentioned earlier the voice of Backman is lyrical and insightful. However, the conflicts he introduces and the characterizations aren’t much interesting as it was in ‘Beartown’.

Much of the problem is that Us Against You doesn’t have a centralized plot. It boasts far too many narrative threads which lead to bit of a stale, vignettes-type of storytelling. There was no moment when there’s a feeling that everything came together. Frankly, I was not interested in Richard Theo’s political manipulations, which is too convoluted and implausible to make us eventually care. Well-established characters like Peter, Kira, and Amat sleep-walks throughout the novel, the latter’s name being reduced to few mentions. Zackell is charming enough but nowhere as interesting as coach David (David is also cast to the periphery in this story). Teemu Rinnius and his Pack’s conflict with Peter don’t bring much tension as we expected. Teemu itself looks like a slightly older copy of Benji with a too simple emotional core. Vidar is introduced far too late into the story and his love story, created for the sake of making the ending ‘heart-breaking’, is cloyingly melodramatic. The fascinating portions in the novel involve Maya, Benji, Leo, and William Lyt. Especially, Lyt’s trajectory was unexpected but touching. ‘Beartown’ had some description of the team’s on-field games. Here the details are fleeting.

Fredrik Backman pursues his favorite thematic strands: hardships of parenting, misfortunes of adolescence, beliefs in tribalism, group hysteria, etc. His razor-sharp perceptions on greed, self control, sexuality, culture, ambition, dreams, etc are once again thoughtful and quote-worthy [“Sometimes good people do terrible things in the belief that they’re trying to protect what they love”, “When guys are scared of dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys”, “Our spontaneous reactions are rarely our proudest moments”, “The worst thing we know about other people is that we're dependent on them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots”]. The author’s wisdom keeps flowing which makes the novel’s emotionally manipulative turns less irritating. Subsequently, it would be nice if the author tone-down a bit with his faux-foreshadowing and overly bright character forecasts; it’s starting to get too repetitive. Altogether, this sequel to Beartown isn’t entirely necessary, but all the same it’s compulsively readable. 

The Little Stranger – A Gripping Slow-Burn Psychological Mystery

“The sexual impulse is the darkest of all, and has to emerge somewhere. It’s like an electric current; it has a tendency, you know, to finds its own conductors. But if it goes untapped – well, then it’s a rather dangerous energy.”

I read British novelist Sarah Waters’ fifth novel The Little Stranger (published in 2009) based on a misconception. What I wanted to read was a spooky ghost story and Waters’ book was labeled as ‘ghost & horror fiction’. It was wrong on both counts. The Little Stranger didn’t frighten me, pushing my mind to conjure a spectral figure in the dark. Yet I was thoroughly intrigued by the author’s strangely affecting slow-burn storytelling, credible characters, and profound social set-up that the novel ‘haunted’ me for few days. Previously I got acquainted with Waters’ consummate prose while reading her dark twisted novel ‘Fingersmith’ (after seeing Park Chan-wook’s excellent movie adaptation ‘The Handmaiden’). The Little Stranger was similarly psychologically layered and class resentment or class anxiety once again plays a pivotal role in setting the rich characters.

The Little Stranger boasts all the Gothic motifs of the classic stories, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ (Henry James) and ‘The Haunting of Hill House’ (Shirley Jackson): a huge, spooky and crumbling manor with a dreadful past, the stranger noises and bloody accidents alleged to be the work of a ghostly pestilence, a well-bred young woman, and a skeptical man of science. However, Sarah Waters uses these familiar elements to intrigue us on surface level, while gradually and boldly infusing wholly different layers of tumultuous emotions beneath it, which eventually comes across as a smart reconstruction of the Gothic literature themes. The novel is set in a rapidly transforming post-World War II England, where social hierarchies are shaken up by the new Labour government. The country hasn’t still escaped the shadow cast by the prolonged period of war. It’s not just the common populace facing the torment of rationed food supplies, the once-wealthy owners of sprawling housing estates are also struck by the weak and recovering economy.

The Ayres Family of Hundreds Hall is one such family, ravaged by the uncertain times. The freshly emerging working classes are bringing about a change in the social system that indirectly affects the landed gentries. In those high-tax times, Warwickshire’s exquisitely beautiful 18^th century mansion ‘Hundreds Hall’ is reduced to a grim structure encircled within thicket of weeds. Dr. Faraday, the middle-aged town doctor (and our narrator) well remembers his boyhood visit to the Hundreds, back in its glory days. He warmly recollects the day he paid visit to the Hundreds’ basement kitchen and partly glimpsed the estate’s marvel. Faraday’s mother was a former Hundreds housemaid and his father was a local shopkeeper. They had both sacrificed their lives for the sake of his medical degree. Dr. Faraday doesn’t have a family of his own, but relishes at the chance to serve the townspeople through his distinguished profession. One fine day in 1947, the doctor gets a call to treat an ailing servant of Hundreds. As soon as entering the estate, he finds that the 14-year-old servant girl isn’t ill, but simply frustrated and terrified by the place’s imposing, intimidating nature. The doctor discreetly addresses the girl’s anxiety. And to his surprise, he is invited to tea by Mrs. Ayres.

Sarah Waters

Initially upon entering into the house, Faraday meets the master of the house, Roderick Ayers. Though a young man in his early 20s, Roderick is worn-out by his wartime experience; a plane crash has awarded him with a burned face, hands, and an impaired knee. His older 26-year-old sister Caroline Ayers however displays boundless energy. Caroline is described as ‘plain-faced’ and a woman with ‘masculine features and unshaven legs’. Caroline’s physical features combined with her eccentric nature has nearly rendered her unmarriageable within their own class, since a girl’s duty in the gentry families is to be ‘proper’ and ‘dazzling’ so as to safeguard their property through a perfect alliance. She cavorts through the isolated mansion and surrounding areas, accompanied by her beloved dog Gyp. Nevertheless, Caroline’s marriage isn’t the only turbulent problem faced by the Ayreses. The family is sustaining on the meager income from the dairy farm. Acre by acre and farm by farm, the Ayreses are giving away the estate’s finer possessions. Most of the valuables within the estate are also sold. Still they have to spend a fortune to keep the structure upright, to mend the pipes, and keep the ever-peeling wallpapers intact. The old Mrs. Ayres’ has had her share of forlornness long before the war, ever since she lost her first daughter Susan (to diphtheria at the age of 6).

Dr. Faraday has known the Ayres family history and now observes firsthand their gradual descent. He is sympathetic towards their plight, but the bachelor doctor is also bothered by his “faintest stirrings of a dark dislike” whenever the Ayreses involuntarily display their old entitled status. Over the next few months, Faraday forges a friendship of sorts with the family, especially the sprightly Caroline. Alongside these rather mundane developments, there’s a strain of unease within Hundreds, supposed to have been caused by a mysterious force. After one particularly horrific incident, the unnerved young maid says, “There’s a bad thing in this house, that’s what! There’s a bad thing, and he makes wicked things happen!” The doctor believes that the ‘bad thing’ or wrongness associated to the old mansion must have a grounded, rational reason. But soon the restless and over-worked Roderick starts to see and feel inexplicable ‘things’, which sets off a madness that threatens to overpower the already bereaved family.

Spoilers Ahead….

Sarah Waters is best known for her historical fiction, set in Victorian-era England and often contains unflinching lesbian protagonists. The Little Stranger differs from those set-ups as it is set in the postwar period and doesn’t have any overtly lesbian characters. However, repressed sexuality and class dynamics play a major role. The author's prose is notable for restraint. It shows in the four characters she has created – 3 Ayres family members and the doctor – who all remain ambiguous throughout the end, never taking the easily identifiable position of good and evil. Waters spends good time (at least 100 out of the 512 pages) to establish the characters, their desires, conflicted emotions, and demoralizing thoughts. She also immerses us into the dilapidated yet strangely enchanting atmosphere of Hundreds – a vestige of the old British class system. Only one-fourth into the novel the ‘bad thing’ is mentioned. Still, the madness perpetrated by the alleged poltergeists isn’t amped-up like in a Stephen King novel. The question over the origin of ‘shadow-creature’ is coated with ambiguity with Dr. Faraday persistently balking at the idea of any supernatural presence.  

Domnhall Gleeson and Ruth Wilson are playing Dr. Faraday & Caroline Ayers respectively in the upcoming movie adaptation (releasing 31st August this year)

An unreliable narrator is one of the fascinating literary devices. Many times it is used to merely conjure a trick for unsuspecting readers. Rarely, the unreliability of a narrator philosophically questions the human consciousness, which despite yielding to science and reason doesn’t entirely quell its darkest desires, prejudices and paranoia. I loved how Waters subtly hints at Dr. Faraday’s clouded perception. His observations may seem transparent and clear-cut, yet slowly we get the feeling that a lot of emotions are boiling beneath that placid surface. The novel might be utterly disappointing to those expecting a chilling tale of ghosts. But I wasn’t bothered by the lack of preternatural forces because Waters makes the ravenous impulses and cravings of the characters' consciousness and repressed emotions much more haunting. While Henry James’ classic ghost literature used Freudian ideas of sexual repression to explore female sexuality of the Victorian-era, Sarah Waters intrepidly reassigns it and offers a different take on the sexual and gender politics. Waters provides ample clues to from where the Hundreds Halls’ “bundle of projected repressions” originates. The cumulative force of these clues tardily gathers and heavily strikes us in the book’s plaintive and nuanced final passage. It’s a baleful reminder of how ‘the little stranger’ (or ‘miasma’, ‘dark germ’) could creep inside any heart, nurturing self-deluded sense of love, class anxiety, repressed sexuality, etc. Altogether, The Little Stranger is a deeply unsettling novel, brimming with psychological complexity and unnerving mood, which smartly reinterprets the Gothic horror novel tropes.