Annie lives a simple, average life. She is married to Dennis, a successful dentist. They have a large house by the lake. She works at the local superstore, although she doesn’t really need to. She likes that it keeps her busy. At home, she likes keeping things neat and tidy. Everything in its proper place.
At night, she dreams of dragons. Of disemboweling beasts and bathing in their blood.
She tries to be a good parent. Her stepdaughter, Crystal, is a bit reserved. But that’s to be expected — her mother died only recently, after all. They’ll grow close, eventually.
Dennis is quiet and somewhat distant. He’s a little boring, and he snores, and he can be gruff, but it’s not like Annie is without her quirks and flaws. Besides, he’s a decent husband and provider. They love each other.
At night, she dreams of dragons. And of the woman in the lake.
I always know my Hallowe’en reading season is going to be a memorable one whenever Emily Carroll has a new book out. Her work has, for me, become intrinsic to the holiday, with much of it delivering the exact kind of eerie, gothic atmosphere I tend to covet and crave. Plus, her stories are always wild, psychedelic rides. A Guest in the House, her latest graphic novel, is no different, and is perhaps my new favorite of her works.
The art is, of course, stunning. Annie’s reality is portrayed, at first, in drab and dreary shades of gray, while the world of the uncanny blazes through with bold, vivid colors (reds and blues, in particular — the color of blood, the color of veins). Carroll isn’t breaking new ground here, but with her obscenely talented hands she makes the trope her own, and as a result we are given hallucinatory, phantasmagoric visions that disturb and delight in equal measure.
The impeccable illustrations are to be expected, but the writing is almost just as impressive. Despite the dreamlike plot, the narrative is actually told in a relatively straightforward manner, with a reserved, rhythmic prose that not only matches the protagonist’s demure demeanor, but also gives the story a claustrophobic sense of dread. As if something sinister is stirring under the surface, threatening to burst out. Which, of course, it inevitably does.
The book does unfortunately stumble a bit towards the end, with a climax that feels somewhat anticlimactic and far too ambiguous. Not that this is the sort of story that at any point commits to clarification or concrete answers, but it would have been nice to get more in the way of a proper conclusion.
Still, I adore this book. One of my absolute favorite reads this Hallowe’en season.
ricardo reading 