The final moment September bleeds into October 1st, a crisp chill takes over the air, and things start to feel undeniably creepier. Families carve pumpkins, leaving hollowed heads on the corner edge of their porches, our favorite streaming services endlessly recommend scary movies to us, and corn fields suddenly become haunted, allowing freighted guests to roam about their mazes (pre-COVID, of course.) Given this, in an effort to be festive I fearlessly decided to read a few stories this month that I imagined would cause that disturbing, though not unfamiliar, chill to run down my spine. Instead, what I found in these pages was a truth that, perhaps, I had actually been hoping for all along: some scary stories just aren’t all that scary.
Continue reading below to see what books I read this month…if you dare.
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware
In a Dark, Dark Wood by Ruth Ware begins with an unnerving invitation. Leonora, a cloistered writer living in London, is surprised when she receives an email inviting her to a “hen” for the upcoming weekend. The email details a party for a friend of Leonora’s who’s about to get married, a friend she hasn’t seen in years. Though Leonora has her reservations, she eventually decides to accept the offer, meeting several others at a house on the English countryside, away from the rest of civilization, right in the middle of the eerie forest. As you can imagine, from here events soon take a turn for the worse…a dark turn.
I feel I should begin my review with an admission: this book took several months for me to read. Although Ware’s novel is advertised as a suspenseful, psychological thriller, in truth there’s hardly anything suspenseful or thrilling about it. The book struggles to achieve its goal of shocking and exciting the reader for, what I believe, are three unforgivable reasons: underdeveloped characters, simplistic writing, and cliched plot.
From the first to the last page, I never felt that I truly got to know any of the characters in this novel. Claire, for example, felt more like a stereotype than a person, her actions, personality, and motives seeming shallow and implausible at best. James, the infamous ex-boyfriend, was always talked about but never seen, and I couldn’t bring myself to care about him at all. And then there’s the protagonist. To be fair, Leonora wasn’t a terrible character, however I found the secrets and distance she kept from others rather irksome. It’s understanding, of course, for the author to keep some information secret, it is meant to be suspense novel, after all. However, I felt there was necessary information about Nora that was not being revealed to me in a reasonable time frame, and because of this, I found that I didn’t know anything about her, making her reactions difficult to sympathize with or even understand. Since I couldn’t relate to virtually any of the characters in this novel, major scenes and revelations that occurred ultimately fell flat.
The writing, much like the characters, wasn’t so much bad as it was simply generic. There was nothing noteworthy when it comes to Ware’s word choice or sentence structure or descriptions. Nothing encouraged me to think deeply about the novel’s themes, characters, or dialogue. In short, it wasn’t engaging. It’s a plot driven story where hardly anything happens in the plot, the narrative jumping back and forth in time to the house and to the hospital where Leonora is being interrogated. The story mindlessly jerks us from one boring scene to the next, never allowing me to become too invested in the banalities of the character’s actions or the protagonist’s incessant inner dialogue. To put it simply: the storytelling was bland; nothing more, nothing less.
Perhaps the simplicity of the characters and the writing is a consequence of the hackneyed plot itself. As I read, I couldn’t shake the feeling of déjà vu that washed over me, wondering where I had read or watched something similar before. The story never stood a chance to be interesting, as it was predictable from the start, the scenes of Ouija boards and phones losing signal making my eyes roll instead of making me afraid. The “villain” explaining their motives at the end in a way that is almost cartoonish; high school dramas somehow cultivating in murder. Still, I couldn’t work up enough enthusiasm to hate the book, its blandness leaving me apathetic and grasping for any kind of emotion at all. That is, ultimately, my biggest issue with In a Dark, Dark Wood: it just didn’t make me care, and perhaps the only scary thing about the book was my complete indifference towards it.
Symptomatic by Danzy Senna
I’ve read several of Danzy Senna’s other works and have always recognized her writing style as engaging and relatable. This is what lead me to her 2001 novel, Symptomatic.
Symptomatic is a story about an unnamed woman who moves to New York City for a fellowship position working at a magazine. There, she forms a friendship with an older woman named Greta Hicks, who shares her multiracial heritage. Throughout the novel this friendship is explored, alongside the protagonist’s own confusion surrounding her identity, and the vague feelings of sickness she experiences. Senna writes, “My symptoms were mild and vague. They roamed my body, like tinkers searching for new temporary homes where they could not be caught. Nausea one day, a dull ache behind my eyes the next. A rash on my neck like something crawling just beneath my skin.” The illness and the friendship intensify overtime, until eventually things exacerbate beyond the protagonist’s control.
Though described as a psychological thriller, the book itself moves rather slowly and, though certainly thought provoking, is not particularly thrilling. The strength of this book lies solely in the writing, and the skillful ways Senna discusses themes of race and identity through the metaphorical friendship shared between Greta Hicks and the protagonist.
Though little happens in terms of plot, I still found the story engaging, the exploration of themes such as race and identity intriguing, the kind of narrative that perhaps would find itself in a college classroom. Of course, this kind of pacing isn’t for everyone, as the book certainly slugs along, unwilling to quicken its space until having reached the novel’s center. However, this also allows for us to truly see the friendship between the protagonist and Greta Hicks change over time, transforming before our eyes into something more unsettling, before catapulting us into an unpredictable climax. Though not scary or suspenseful, it’s clear that Senna wasn’t trying to be, choosing instead to focus on the protagonist navigating the world and figuring out her identity, simply using the friendship as a symbol in support of that.
Perhaps there is something scary in how grounded this story is in reality; the knowledge that we could possibly never escape confusion surrounding our identity or find where we fit into society. That this feeling of displacement could take hold of us, always living in the back of our minds like a tumor, the symptoms only showing themselves sporadically until the illness has completely taken over our lives.
The Girls by Emma Cline
The Girls, by Emma Cline, is the story of a girl named Evie Boyd, who gets involved with a cult in late-sixties California. The novel is loosely based on the Manson family, who lived on a desert commune and committed a series of horrific murders the same year that the book is set. Cline’s novel moves in parallel to those historical events, transcribing the horrors that can happen at the hands of young, impressionable girls.
What stands out most about The Girls is the way that it is written. The quality of Cline’s writing lies mainly in her own stylistic choices and the profound way in which she details the human experience. The writing kept me engaged throughout as it painted a very fascinating picture of each and every one of the characters in the novel. I will say, however, that I agree with some critics who felt that perhaps the book was overwritten in some areas. The massive amount of description in the beginning of novel makes the story move at a slower pace initially, and at first I wasn’t convinced that I should continue reading, as nearly 70 pages in we had yet to be introduced to the cult, instead given a hefty amount of backstory weighed down by flowery writing. Some descriptions didn’t feel necessary, instead seeming as though they were put there for the appearance of depth, the author too focused on style instead of getting the story across. However, when it comes to the structure and style of the narrative as a whole, I feel that the good outweighs the bad, and ultimately the writing stands as the novel’s primary strength.
Out of the all the stories discussed on this post, this book stands out as the one that is the best at being creepy. Though it wasn’t particularly frightening, I still found it disturbing to read about the murders while absorbing the themes of the narrative. Interestingly enough, when Cline describes the murders, she uses much less description than she has throughout the rest of the book. The way she pulls back makes the horrific act seem more abrupt, cruel, and leaves you sitting fully in a feeling of unease. However, perhaps more chilling than the murders is the way in which Cline uses the cult to describe themes of corruption, abuse, and pressures that young women face in society, an issue that is arguably more relevant today. Thus, the scariness of The Girls lies mainly in its relatability, carefully crafted through the writing of the novel. Though Cline, at times, relies on stylistic sentence fragments and overdone metaphors, the story of Evie Boyd and the themes of the book still shine through. Cline’s writing paints a startlingly vivid picture, to the point where we as readers can truly see ourselves in young Evie Boyd, and even begin to ask ourselves the same terrifying question she asks herself: would I have done it?
Concluding Thoughts
What all of these stories share in common is that they’re all suspense stories that aren’t quite suspenseful. This is forgivable in the case of Symptomatic and The Girls, as it feels almost intentional. Cline and Senna spend more time exploring the themes within their narration, ultimately producing beautifully written novels that keep you thinking well after you’ve finished them. In a Dark, Dark Wood, however, proves to be the most disappointing, with writing that is hardly interesting, characters that are shallow, and a storyline that lacks depth. Paradoxically, perhaps this makes it the scariest of all.
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