Devil House by John Darnielle
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This the third book of J.D.'s I've read, and I enjoyed it the most. I've been a fan of his musical output for more than 15 years, but have been consistently and pleasantly surprised by his fiction. His writing is not "good for a musician"; it's actually just plain good. Devil House continues his streak of gorgeous literary prose reflecting the preoccupations of his youth like a funhouse mirror.
The core of the book follows a true crime author trying to write a book about an unsolved case involving an apparent Satanic ritual murder at an abandoned porn store, but that's only one of the stories the book is telling. The book jogs back and forth, disorientingly, between the internal author's history, his writing process, the underlying story he's trying to tell right now, and a detailed exploration of one of his prior true crime books. Some details recur while others conflict, and (without spoiling anything) teasing out the truth is a constant challenge. Oh, and in case you were concerned that none of this sounds odd enough, there's a medium-length folkloric divagation at the center of the novel about the legendary British king Gorbonianus entirely written in what I can only assume is deliberately atrocious faux Middle English1
It's a complex book with many turnings, and I'm sincerely tempted to re-read it soon just to see which connections I've missed. My principal criticism is that (as was also the case in some of his prior works) the ending just sort of suddenly appeared like a party crasher: exploding into the story all at once, making a mess of the carefully balanced scene, and then declining to clean up after itself. Lots of loose threads left hanging, presumably by design, but still somewhat unsatisfying even in the knowledge that it was intentional.
A very good, perhaps great, book that deeply explores how we construct and commodify stories about notionally true events and about ourselves. Highly recommended.
Footnotes:
It reads like Old or Middle English as a highschooler might imagine it, which given the narrative context may be exactly right. It's otherwise a very odd choice. Gorbonianus (if he existed at all) is loosely dated to the 4th century B.C.E. when nothing resembling English was spoken. Our main source for information about him is Geoffrey of Monmouth who lived in the 12th century and spoke French or Welsh, and his History of Kings was written in Latin. So I can only assume the section is intended as an "interior" document representing an imagined tale generated by one of the characters in the book. It stylistically makes no sense otherwise. For anyone who wants a better example of a book written in pidgin Old English that's still loosely comprehensible, I can highly recommend Paul Kingsnorth's The Wake.