A review by octavia_cade
A Guest in the House by E.M. Carroll

dark reflective medium-paced

4.0

My first reaction, when reading this, was that the end was quite abrupt, not especially foreshadowed, and not especially clear either. After thinking about it for a bit, though, I'm certain that those first two reactions are dead wrong. Reading back over the text, there are any number of places where the climax has been carefully, quietly prefigured. It's both clever and subtle, and the twist regarding the first wife was something that I didn't see coming. It's also something that, reading the book over again (and picking up on the clues better this time round) is still surprising but not shocking, if that makes sense. The horror here is so everyday, so seeping and domestic, and so wrapped up in characters who look away and don't want to deal with their issues, that it passes, much of it, for normal. Or at least for unremarkable, until the whole seething insanity comes together at the end.

It's just very well done. I still feel that those ending panels are a little unclear as to what actually happens between the two wives but that's a deliberately chosen ambiguity on Carroll's part, I think.