Fiction Reviews
Incidents Around The House
(2024/2025) Josh Malerman, Nightfire, £9.99, pbk, 369pp, ISBN 978-1-035-07341-2
Originally published in the US in 2024, this 2025 edition marks its first outing in the UK. Josh Malerman is the New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box, Incidents Around the House. Incidents Around the House is a chilling, wholly unique tale of true horror about a family as haunted as their home. To eight-year-old Bela, her family is her world. There’s Mommy, Daddy 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…
Talk about tearing up the writing rule book? One of the members of my local writer’s group isn’t happy when other members submit a piece of writing for criticism where the start of each paragraph isn’t indented; but here, Malerman points out at the start in his author’s note, that the narration and action are left-justified and only the dialogue is indented as the story is told by a child. I must use that excuse at my group next time I’m pulled up. If it’s good enough for Malerman, it’s good enough for me. But, seriously, authors can do what they want to tell their story, and very often do.
Despite the unusual layout, or perhaps, because of it, this is a surprisingly easy read, told over 367 pages in 51 chapters, and it chills you right from the start with chapter one, which consists of only seven lines, but that fifth line and the two that follow are killers. Malerman nails the story by telling it through the eyes and thoughts of eight-year-old Bela who is an innocent abroad, inter-acting with her parents and other adults and, of course, the Other Mummy. It is all the creepier for the reportage way that Bela recounts events, almost matter-of-factly, which adds to the uneasy in scenes where the Other Mummy crouches out of sight of her parents, or gives off a smell that her father senses
At first Bela’s parents, Ursula and Russ, think this Other Mummy is an imaginary friend, although right from the start Ursula is a bit more hesitant to leave Bela alone at night, and by telling the story through dialogue and Bela’s observations and thoughts, we are almost given a stream of consciousness view of events. But can Bela’s view really be trusted? She is only eight after all, and all is obviously not well on the family front. On one hand we have the creeping unease of a haunted house/imaginary friend/Boogeyman story, and the story of a seemingly happy marriage beginning to unravel and the cracks beginning to appear between Bela’s parents.
I don’t want to spoil Malerman’s twisted fun, or the reader’s enjoyment, but apart from the unease and dread that Malerman conjures up right from the off, there are some great action scenes here, especially where other people encounter the Other Mummy, and Bela’s parents try to get help from a variety of sources, all to no avail. And as for the ending? Some readers will love it, others will hate it, but, I think, it is true to the story.
Years ago, I had an audio book in cassette-form of Jonathan Aycliffe’s wonderfully, spooky novel Naomi’s Room read by the late, Tony Britton. It creeped me out playing it in the car, especially when driving alone at night, when I kept thinking there was something hiding in the back. I can imagine the audio version of Incidents Around the House would be just as sinister, but I think I’ll pass this time, but if you like stories that are creepy, and unsettling, and different, this is one for you.
Ian Hunter
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