In the House in the Dark of the Woods by Laird Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a lovely scientific treatise on the life cycle and development of the witch. It comes, of course, in three phases. You don’t realize at first that that’s what you’re reading. Because the various witches at various points in the cycle appear very different. It’s only at the end of the novel, when we see the metamorphoses from phase to phase, that it all comes together.
So if you start reading In the House in the Dark of the Woods and it seems mixed-up and confusing, don’t worry. It all comes together in the end. It’s a big picture with a lot of complex emotional valences, and the author can only show a bit at a time. A lot of different clues have to be in place before the big reveal can happen.
And if you read somewhere that it’s a fairy tale, and you want the swineherd to marry the princess at the end, well… It’s not going to be like that. It’s true that it’s written very much like a fairy tale. Very much in the Neil Gaiman mode. There’s a Brothers Grimm style of diction that it does a good job adhering to.
But it doesn’t quite have the same kind of plot as a fairy tale. The plot is much more like going to the zoo. You pass a series of animals that, at first, seem like they don’t have anything to do with each other. But if you have a good guide–and Laird Hunt is a good guide–you’ll see, by the end, that it’s all one ecosystem.
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