Epeolatry Book Review: The Spite House by Johnny Compton

“Maybe she could have done better work from the inside.”

The Spite House is a gripping mystery told through multiple perspectives, glimpsing the Ross family’s insights as they wish to share them. The book gradually expands to an ensemble of characters circling them who evoke remnants of the theater of the grotesque. With wit, acuity and heart, Johnny Compton has crafted a story that gives fresh voice to the haunted house sub-genre while infusing it with history. It’s tense and intriguing on the paranormal side as well as the Rosses’ background before they arrive in Degener.

The town itself is part of a foreshadowing spell the book casts in the naming of things – Degener evokes Union-Confederate conflict and tragedy. Masson evokes André Masson, enthusiastic employer of automatic drawing, associated with mediums channeling spirits and giving their hands over to chance and irrationality, relinquishing control. (Masson also had to flee Nazi persecution in occupied France, but when we first hear his name, we don’t yet know what Eric and his daughters are running from.)

The multiple-narrator format also summons up the ominous pacing of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, though here we are not in first-person, which allows for a certain amount of distance as well as omniscient contributions to the narrative. The overall effect is that the reader is a voyeur watching each different person for a piece of time, not necessarily with the consent that’s implicit in first-person telling. Through this lens we get to meet the engaging ensemble, starting with the Rosses: Eric, a stoic, practical father of two daughters who is trying desperately to provide for and protect his severed family. Dess, his eighteen-year-old daughter, a parentified child who is careful, observant and finds her own ways to plan for their future. Stacey, her seven-year-old sister, who draws with skills beyond her years and has some kind of connection to the ethereal. Then there’s the Masson house crew, helmed by Eunice – an heiress of wealth so steeped in blood that she’s spent her whole life claiming absolution through her humanitarian acts, while maintaining a tight hold over the town. Dana, her right hand, whose crisp jazz bob you can practically hear swish as she walks, all precision and keeper of Eunice’s darkest corners. Lafonda, Eunice’s therapist-cum-au-pair, serves as the only warmth in the building. And finally, of course, the Masson house’s mysterious past tenants, who make themselves known bit by bit.

The plot develops in a twisting stream of revelations; things that happen, and things that are made to happen. Gradually a careful tone gives way to the pervasive creep of doubt and suspicion, characters assuming the worst. The characters’ motivations and story logic are a little forced to fit certain aspects together, sacrificing more rich character development for some in order to serve the journey beats of others. It starts fast and continues apace, so you don’t have to wait long for your sightings. One of its strengths is in its sharp observations of humanity in complex relationships and morally ambiguous decisions. The language is simple, which serves the pace and the happenings, though sometimes detracts from their impact. There’s a Southern drawl to the storytelling style, not economic but flavourful, playing out an idea in all the ways it needs to be worded to be understood. It’s more tell than show. This does fall prey to repetitiveness at points, and bluntness, or cliche at others, leaving the ending suffering somewhat from a disrupted rhythm, throwing off the climax and leaving a feeling of unfinished business.

That said, the novel captures the grains of salt that make up modern politics playing out under and within the main narrative. Racial tension are keenly felt in the dynamics between Eric and his employer, Eunice. Emily, filled with good intentions (I’m sure you know where this is headed) makes a clumsy pass for Eric’s trust, letting her bruised white woman ego slip its foot in the door before he can close down their first encounter, and the resulting distance only puts Eric further into harm’s way. The questions raised around what exactly you have to say to the world, how, and in what context, and of what impact you can have from the inside or outside of a corruption, build a chilling picture of failure for would-be allies. From the wrong angle, good intentions make for an ugly outcome, and likewise from the right one, can smuggle in ugly motives. And even in the more brazen motives we are served some deliciously chilling details, such as the Spite House being built in order to delay sunrise, and hasten sunset, over the valley.

“’May not be what you heard, but that’s what I said. You’ve always gotta pay close attention.’”

Aside from the dangerous game of interactions with strangers who could condemn them with truth or untruth, the Rosses show us sneaky discrepancies in the physical world that trick both them and the reader. Scattering shape-shifting details through multiple perspectives, the Spite House and its surroundings gaslight those in their perimeters into uncertainty, chipping away a tiny piece of their defenses. And some of these details are revealed so casually that they are more unnerving in their quiet confidence, like you could genuinely blink and miss them, and then you might be unprepared, unaware. Better to stay vigilant. Think through every instance to the nth degree. Be sure, be safe.

Speaking to our times (both contemporary and of the American Civil War), The Spite House is a novel of Black vigilance, survival and legacy through a life on the run, amidst any number of potential threats. Nothing and no one can be trusted; latent evils linger potently in the air as more obvious, immediate ones. “‘We both know that the only one who’ll keep you from calling the cops is you,’” states Dana, while showing Eric round the house. “Like it would be routine for her to turn any information she had on him against him.” Playing their cards carefully, Eric and his family could still find their tenuous friends turning to powerful foes in a moment. That liminal space (with its perfect concrete setting of Texas Hill Country, between everything in more than one regard) echoes the duality of the war, in which stories are told when and how they need to be, weaving and unweaving reality while something else happens alongside. The moment of suspense surrounding a decision that will clear one path and burn another clings to Eric, Dess, and Stacy throughout the book. What could you decide while no one was watching? Who would you build a house to spite?

If you like gothic classics The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson or The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, then you might like The Spite House for its tangible depiction of a house with a magnetic-repulsive aura built on tragic foundations. If you like Jordan Peele’s Get Out, you might like this book for the biting proximity of charged racial dynamics with a backdrop of furious rich white folly.

/5

Available from Amazon or Bookshop.