Review: 'Just Like Home' by Sarah Gailey
Pub. Date: 7/19/2022
Publisher: Macmillan-Tor/Forge; Tor Books
“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in spite of the memories — she's come back to the home of a serial killer. Back to face the love she had for her father and the bodies he buried there, beneath the house he'd built for his family.
Coming home is hard enough for Vera, and to make things worse, she and her mother aren’t alone. A parasitic artist has moved into the guest house out back and is slowly stripping Vera’s childhood for spare parts. He insists that he isn’t the one leaving notes around the house in her father’s handwriting… but who else could it possibly be?
There are secrets yet undiscovered in the foundations of the notorious Crowder House. Vera must face them and find out for herself just how deep the rot goes.
Gothic novels, and horror stories more generally, thrive in a complicated home-setting. I have mentioned elsewhere how the Gothic genre is a perfect medium for stories about trauma because it plays so beautifully with atmosphere. In Gothic fiction, more perhaps than in any other, everything comes together to create a fertile atmosphere in which the mind can, and often does, break. Depending on the book, this break can fall on the side of clarity, breaking through preconceived notions or lies, or on the side of loss, breaking away from reality or what we generally consider to be acceptable. It is for these reasons that I enjoy the Gothic, but also need to dose out my indulgence in it. The Gothic is soft and warm, deceptively comforting, until it becomes sticky and grasping and hard to get out of. In Just Like Home, Gailey plays with these aspects to tell a chilling tale of childhood, home, and trying to find your place. In my review of The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker, I mentioned how Walker 'employs the drama and heightened atmosphere of the Gothic to tell a story about pain'. While I would argue that Gailey does the same, the emphasis of the novel is more explicitly on horror and twists. This does not mean Just Like Home doesn't have things to say, rather it means you should go into the novel knowing it wants to scare you explicitly, rather than chill you through private realizations.
Vera is standing in front of her childhood home and she feels like maybe she should turn around and leave. But her mother is inside, dying, and she should do the right thing, the thing a good person would do, which is go inside, take care of her, and sort out the house. Vera has never felt at home anywhere the way she did in this house, which her father built for their family. But the house hides secrets, which Vera needs to unravel. She is not the only one, however, as there is also an artist, looking to cash in on the house's reputation. What reputation? Good question, that is one of the mysteries the reader needs to explore throughout Just Like Home. Vera is an intriguing narrator because you realise pretty quickly that whatever difficult or traumatic thing happened in her childhood makes her unreliable. As the novel flits back and forth between the present and the back, it becomes clear that something horrible happened in the house but that, equally, something horrible may be happening right now. Vera, as an unreliable narrator, is at times hard to fully understand, but in a way I found intriguing. Her mother and the artist feel more stereotypically horror side-characters, but they fulfilled their function very well within the narrative. What gripped me most about Just Like Home was the way Gailey built up a sense of dreadful comfort. I don't know if that makes sense, but there is this constant tension between "Vera is in danger" and "Vera is home", which reminded me a little of The Haunting of Hill House in vibe. Just Like Home is definitely more gory than that, however, so bear that in mind if you're not down for copious mentions and depictions of blood, death, etc.
This was my first Sarah Gailey read, but it shall not be my last. The atmosphere she created, as well as the imagery, gripped me throughout my reading. The novel flits back and forth between Vera's perspective now, as she tries to figure out what is wrong with her mother, tries to not care how damaged and abusive their relationship is, and sort through what is left, and Vera as a child, on the cusp of teenagehood and moments away from everything falling apart. The split works well, for the most part, but some of the twists rely on adult Vera not telling us, the reader things, which, if I were her, would never be far from my mind. While sometimes I get annoyed at things being held back, it works here, in part because of the trauma and repression inherent to the Gothic genre. Just Like Home tries to do a lot of things at once. There is the complicated mother-daughter relationship, the worship of a father-figure, the horror of growing up into a woman, the issue of men in general, and the idea of a house and a home. The novel leans into real-life horror as well as Gothic, almost paranormal horror. I enjoyed each of these aspects, but I must admit that around three quarters into the novel, I wondered if all of it was fully necessary or if we were losing some focus. However, all these elements do add up to a very suspenseful and atmospheric novel. I read much of it while traveling back and forth with a friend and I kept updating her on what was happening. Admittedly I don't know how much the other passengers (or my friend) appreciated the goriness of it, but it speaks to how involved I was.
I give this novel...
4 Universes!
Just Like Home is a great Gothic horror novel which delves into all kinds of different themes. It is on the gorier side of the Gothic genre, but it is also delightfully twisty.
Comments
Post a Comment