In the House In the Dark of the Woods

Today’s post is on In the House In the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt. It is 214 and is published by Little, Brown, and Company. The cover red with a wolf in the center and four hands around the outside of the wolf’s head. The intended reader is someone who likes surreal novels with a little added horror in them. There is no foul language, no sex, and mild violence in this novel. The story is told from first person perspective of the main characters Goody. There Be Spoilers Ahead.

From the dust jacket- In his ingenious harrow story set in colonial New England, a woman foes missing. Or not missing0 perhaps she has fled, abandoned her family. Or perhaps she’s been kidnapped and set loose to wander in the dense woods of the north. Alone and possible lost, she meets another woman in the forest. Then everything changes.
On a journey that will take her through a wolf-haunted wood, down a deep well, and onto a living ship made of human bones, our heroine is forced to confront her past and may find that the evil she flees has been inside her all along.  

Review- A surreal novel with a horror twist at the ending that I did not see coming. The nameless heroine, who is called Goody, has gone into the forest to pick berries for her family. She warned by a stranger in the forest to not go but thinking that he just wants the berries for himself she continues. Goody then find herself lost in the forest but not alone. She meets several people like Eliza who lives alone in a pretty house and talks about someone called Red Boy. I did not feel like this novel was set in colonial New England but in a strange parallel world like ours but not and full of oddness and magic. Goody was an interesting character who is revealed to the reader slowly as she travels and is trying to decide where she wants to be. Then the twist at the end is what pushes it over into horror territory, until then this was not a horror novel but a surreal one. I enjoyed this novel and would recommend it for anyone looking for a different type of horror novel.

I give this novel a Four out of Five stars. I get nothing for my review and I borrowed this book from my local library.