Here's another horror novel about generational abuse, an increasingly frequent topic nowadays, but one that's channelled into ethnic and cultural horror. In this instance, that's Jewish culture, in a way that's not at all as religious as that might sound.
It grabbed me immediately, because the first chapter is impeccable. It's only two pages long but it will freak a lot of people out and it carries a serious punch. Tamar Glass, formerly Tamar Kahan, is asleep in her own bed in her own house where nobody else lives, and she's about to wake up. When she does, she'll be confronted by a horrible apparition that's apparently been watching her sleep. It takes both of them aback, naturally scaring Tamar but also the apparition, which promptly pees on her floor. It's her mother, Ruth.
Now, Ruth currently lives in an independent living facility called Somerset House, which is twenty miles away by car, something she doesn't have. While she's docile, quiet and compliant, it appears that she left the facility and walked the twenty miles to Tamar's house on foot, even though she's unaware of where it is. That's weird, but it's just the beginning. Well, it's the beginning for us. It's the latest weirdness for Tamar, who grew up with it. Ruth was not a good mum. In fact, Tamar was able to escape her childhood at eighteen, leaving the abuse behind and creating her own safe life somewhere far away. Exactly what her childhood was like, we learn gradually.
One detail that we learn relatively quickly is that Ruth was an alcoholic and Tamar may well have followed in her footsteps. She certainly went to AA, referred to as Al-Anon herewhich I've never heard beforebecause she met her husband there. However, she never had a problem, or so she thinks, just the potential for one. She was able to stop when she wanted and presumably still can, except she doesn't. This is important because it leads into her night walking, something she used to do as a child, and she starts to wonder whether she's doing some of the weird things that start to happen.
A lot of them are traditional horror movie fare. She walks into a room and glasses spontaneously break, a package she put outside mysteriously comes back in, all the cupboards and drawers in the kitchen are suddenly open (or closed). It's textbook haunted house shenanigans, but they could all be Tamar doing things in her sleep or even in blackout moments. Certainly the package is because a neighbour catches it on his doorbell camera. This book has a slow build and it constantly asks us whether we want to believe the rational explanation, that Tamar is drinking more than she thinks and has more of a problem than she admits, or something more supernatural.
This is the main reason why the build is slow, but Hardy doesn't want to throw too many characters at us, instead building the few that she has. Tamar is easily the focus, with Ruth following in tow, a phrase that starts to feel literal when Somerset House kicks her out and Tamar, against her every wish, takes her in. After all, we're in Kettering, Ohio, and her younger sister Lovey, who's married with six kids, moved to California for her husband's work. That's why Tamar's back in town, after a life in New York. Well, that and the fact that she got divorced. So she gets Ruth by default.
I appreciated Tamar a great deal, because she's a long way from the typical horror lead character. She's middle aged, for a start, closing in on fifty. She's divorced, but there's very little romance in the air. Sure, her childhood boyfriend Miguel is suddenly back in the picture, but he almost joined the priesthood after what he saw in their house decades ago, so any courting he's doing isn't fast. She's also Jewish, but not a particularly devout one. While there are hints at possession here, the house or Ruth or both, Tamar doesn't immediately rush to the synagogue to get help. This isn't a religious horror novel in the vein of 'The Exorcist'.
I also appreciated how Mina Hardy handled diversity. Most of the characters here are minorities, but we don't know that from the outset because their minority status isn't what drives them. All of them are people, just that, and sometimes we learn enough about them to realise something that we might have noticed immediately had we met them in person. The main characters are all Jewish. Officer Pham is gay. Shawn, a caregiver Tamar hires, is black, we presume, or at least dark-skinned. When a rabbi does appear, she's female. However, while we spend enough time with the Jews to see them do Jewish things, we're not in the company of the others long enough for them to follow suit. These are believable characters rather than tokens.
I'm being careful about what I reveal to avoid spoilers but I'll say that this unfolds psychologically rather than gratuitously. There's horror, to come, surely to goodness, but before that arrives, we have to learn about the horror in the past, which Tamar has theoretically come to terms with over half a century. My favourite scenes here unfold when she visits the house she grew up in and chats with the family who live there now who made it their own. They invite her in because there are questions and that's when we learn some things. They've found one of the hidden rooms but Tamar can show them the other and we learn how Ruth used it.
I liked all this build, but I can see how some readers might feel that it's a little overdone, building like a thriller rather than a horror novel. All the way, we're asked, along with Tamar, to determine whether this is entirely psychological, the trauma of her past manifesting itself at a new stressful time, especially given her drinking and the fact that she's back in the town where it all happened, or whether there's a supernatural reason waiting to be unveiled. Given that, I won't tell you which it is, but I did wonder about possession, ghosts and demons at various points in the novel.
I'd recommend this if you're a fan of psychological thrillers as well as horror novels and especially if you're OK with a slow build. It's a quick enough read, running under three hundred pages which turn pretty fast, but it asks questions of us and not every reader appreciates that. I did, but it's a possibility that you won't. Hopefully this review will guide in one way or the other, based on your own personal tastes. ~~ Hal C F Astell
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