I Want My OtherMommy

There's something about kids and horror that just go hand in hand. Whether they are the source of evil or the ones evil preys upon, children are just plain creepy -- and occasionally you'll get one that's downright annoying (I'm looking at you, The Babadook), so I knew it was only a matter of time before I got around to Josh Malerman's Incidents Around the House. Besides is being a book that centered around a child, I knew very little by way of what to expect.

The titles implies the possibility of a haunted house novel, while the cover lends itself to the idea that we'll either be dealing with a possessed toy or an imaginary friend gone bad. It turned out to be the latter. What we end up dealing with is an 8-year-old narrator who lives in a house with her mother, her father (who she calls Daddo), and an entity she calls Other Mommy, and, as we learn early on, Bela's mother has been distant recently. Given that bit of information, we, the reader, suspect Other Mommy is either a spirit within the house or an imaginary friend created to replace the often missing or preoccupied mother figure. Things take a sinister turn when we learn that Other Mommy has been asking to go into Bela's heart and there's been talk about "carnations," and that Other Mommy won't stop asking until Bela says "Yes." I really can't say much more than that without giving anything away.

The one thing that stood out for me while reading this book is a story I heard when I was a child, about a little girl who dreamed of a man coming in through her bedroom window every night and asking her to go with him. This unnerves the parents, who think that some pervert is creeping into their daughter's bedroom. They set up their own surveillance. Nothing. They call the cops. Nothing. Then they begin to suspect something more sinister. Something supernatural. So they take it to their priest. The priest tells them that whatever is happening, you must tell her never to say yes to this man. The nightly visitations continue, and the bring their daughter in to talk to the priest. It is then that the little girls looks at a picture of Jesus, points, and says that's the man who keeps coming into her room. The priest maintains that the girl should never say yes, and while the parents agree with him to his face, they don't see the harm in telling their daughter that if that's the man who wants her to go with him, it's okay to go. The next morning, the child was dead. So with that story firmly planted in my head, I was curious to find out where Malerman was going to take the story.

At this point I want to reveal that I listened to the audiobook version, and that probably influenced my reception of the novel. The narrator did a fantastic job of capturing the childlike essence of the character, and she pulled me into the story immediately. There was something captivating about her narration; I didn't want to stop/put down the book. I often wonder, when listening to audiobooks, if it's the narrator that makes the story for me, and if I would have had the same reaction if I had read the book. That's something I'll never know the answer to, but what I do know is that I loved this book. While not fast paced, it is gripping, and Malerman takes you to places that are dark and not exactly comfortable, and you get the feeling the author is intentionally holding back one more revelation, possibly because to include it would make the story cliche and like so many other stories of this type. The only negative I have, which isn't really a bad thing, is that at times the narrator sounded like someone familiar, and that familiar someone is Zelda Rubinstein from Poltergeist, and it happens enough times to the point I have to wonder is it wasn't intentional instead of being coincidental. I happen to love Zelda, though, so it wasn't really an issue for me, but for someone else, it might be enough to pull you out of the story. Final rating, 5/5 stars. Highly recommended.