88. Bleak November – Rohan O’Grady

This has the normal set up for a haunted house story – new house, young couple, mother-in-law buys them a house and it has a tragic past. In some of these, it would be the husband who is at home all the time to work on the great American novel who would be quietly going mad, but in this case we’re always with his wife, Amy, who also quit her job but then sort of is going back (but we really don’t read about her working).

Amy ends up with lodgers and one is a way better housekeeper, so Amy has time to have a very weird affair with the suggested handyman, Igor, who is very pushy. And she has time to vaguely find out about the tragic past murdered family who lived in her house. There are newspaper clippings across the top of each chapter that aren’t the full clippings, almost as if something’s constantly being left out of the story…

At the end, after the seance and all the fantasizing and Amy forgetting her husband hates peanut butter and a weird trip to the zoo, it’s not exactly clear what’s going on, but it also is. I wondered why there are polar bears on the new cover when it’s a Gothic haunted house, now I know, mostly.

Danger Crumples really loved frisee. I still think of him every time I buy it even though he’s been gone for almost ten years. Clearly, I am not descending into madness just yet.