SOUNDTRACK: hiatus
[READ: March 2022] Man, Fuck This House
Okay, so this book has the best title.
I didn’t expect a lot from it, but I thought I’d give it a read. not really knowing exactly what to expect with a title like that.
So the novel is a horror story. And it isn’t all that funny (it’s not supposed to be). The simple summation is that a house becomes possessive of the person who is taking care of it. The house wants to make that person happy and is content to get rid of everyone else.
So a family has moved to this house on a cul de sac in New Mexico.
There are two children. And older daughter and a younger son. I was a little bummed at the outset to learn that the son consumed his twin in the womb, because it seemed so ripe for cliche, but Asman did some interesting things with that idea. The daughter is an aloof teenager.
The husband is kind of a goof and not really all that present.
Really, the story is about the wife and mom, Sabrina.
Sabrina likes the house quite a lot when they move in. Her husband goes to work and the kids are at school, so it’s just her. And she notices weird things are happening.
Like, she thinks about taking a bath and when she goes upstairs, the bath is full of piping hot water. Or she thinks about making coffee and when she goes in the kitchen, it is freshly made.
And, the most alarming one–she is bringing heavy boxes to the basement when a man she’s never seen before carries one downstairs, freaking her out. The man says he only wanted to help, and then disappears out the crawl space (which he could never have fit into).
What the heck is going on? Is she going crazy?
From there I expected a pretty run of the mill horror story with the poor wife being driven crazy.
But Asman twists it a bit. Sabrina talks to her neighbor Zephyr Rubens (David Crosby gave her the name in 1972) and Zephyr suggests that maybe the house is not evil. Maybe it’s trying to do help her?
Sabrina thinks about it and realized that the events were freaky, but were ultimately helpful.
But it’s a little too late. Her husband thinks that she is losing her mind and wants her to see a psychiatrist. And, worse yet, her son has some wicked pranks to play on her to drive her over the edge.
Well, the house doesn’t want to see Sabrina hurt so it goes on the attack.
The end goes way over the top and the story turns remarkably violent all of a sudden (a high body count, although not too gruesome).
This was a very fast read. I suppose if it had been fleshed out more, the characters could have been more substantial. But let’s face it, this was meant to be a fun, fast read with a fright factor that’s not off the charts, but which might make you think twice about whether you turned on the water yourself.
Asman has at least three other books out (and two of them are here at my desk). None of them have a name as good is this one, but Nunchuck City is pretty fun sounding.
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