A Monster That Lives Inside Your Closet

I recently finished reading Incidents Around the House by Josh Malerman.

~POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT~

  Rating: 2.5/5 stars

"To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddo, and Grandma Ruth. But there is also Other Mommy, a malevolent entity who asks her every day: “Can I go inside your heart?”

When horrifying incidents around the house signal that Other Mommy is growing tired of asking Bela the question over and over, Bela understands that unless she says yes, her family will soon pay.

Other Mommy is getting restless, stronger, bolder. Only the bonds of family can keep Bela safe, but other incidents show cracks in her parents’ marriage. The safety Bela relies on is about to unravel.

But Other Mommy needs an answer."

The only incident around here is that I read this whole book. This is a very short read, and it took me forever to get through this. The choppy short sentences from eight year old Bela were painful to read, and this story was not creepy or scary to me at all! I kept waiting for something to happen, but it never did. I guess the ending is good, but if you can suffer through this to get there, then more power to you. This book is labeled as a horror novel, but I would label it as a children’s book.

Ignoring the fact that the synopsis states Bela is 8 years-old when she is clearly more like 6 on paper, and the often-repeated and annoying endearment of "Daddo," I found myself happily immersed and pleasantly chilled by a couple of early encounters with Other Mommy. But the novel couldn't maintain that promising beginning.

I know a lot of people are loving this book, but for me, the story and the storytelling used here were not enough to sustain its novel length, even taking into account the unusual formatting that actually makes the book much shorter than it is. I guess what I'm trying to say, is that this would have been much better as a short story or short novella. I get that Malerman was trying to do something different by relating events entirely from Bela's perspective, but I think the story would have been better served, and I would have been more invested in the fates of the characters, if we got at least some brief interludes from an adult perspective (grandma's and Lois' for instance, not the insufferable Mommy and Daddo). And for all the time spent in Bela's perspective, I still don't feel like I was in her head, like I got to know her. Kids aren't blank slates. Even for their limited years, they have memories and should have more depth and associations in relating events and making connections. Other horror writers have relayed stories from a young child's perspective in a much more effective and believable way (Stephen King with Danny Torrance in The Shining, for example). And when the family here took their act on the road and unleashed Other Mommy on various and sundry of their friends and relatives, things got repetitive fast, and any inkling of creepiness went out the window.

Ultimately, despite some early creepiness and the quite frightening descriptions of Other Mommy, the scariest thing about Incidents Around the House was how awful Bela's parents were.

Check out Incidents Around the House and discover what happens when she asks to go into your heart.