Reviews

In the House Upon the Dirt Between the Lake and the Woods by Matt Bell

erikbergstrom's review against another edition

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3.0

I mostly didn't like this book. Some parts of it were okay. Some days I could read a good chunk. Others I just didn't have the patience to get past a few pages. I didn't think it was reaching with its language, most of it seemed pretty straightforward to me. It was just the technique I didn't care for. But Bell committed to it and hey, he got it published, so good on him.

Actually, sometimes when I was reading it I liked to pretend that the narrator was just over the top unreliable and borderline insane, and that none of this stuff was happening as he related it, but it was just how he perceived it. Makes it a little funnier that way.

justlily's review

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1.0

I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to this book! The summary sounded right up my alley and the title is very catching. However the author's writing style (perhaps just here, not in general) is so pretentious that it's unbearable and I find I can't keep going after twenty pages. It just SCREAMS "desperate try hard really wants to be hip and special!" and is damn near impossible to sift through. What could (would, even!) have been a fascinating story is utterly demolished and ground into the dirt by half-page long run on sentences that make very little sense.

Overall, I wanted to like it, but I can't. I really, really can't.

spinstah's review against another edition

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I paused in reading this so I could read the book for book club, and decided not to come back to it. I realized that I really didn't care abut the characters or the story, though it was interesting to me in theory.

taytots24's review

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2.0

Felt like a poetic nightmare.

routergirl's review

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2.0

Did not finish. It is a strangely beautiful tale, and intriguing somewhat, and the writing makes you feel you're reading a fable or a folk tale.

But 50% of the way through I found myself thinking, "This must be done soon?" When I saw I had 50% to go, I realized I just couldn't take that much more of it. Sad, weird, and lovely all at once. Maybe my head just wasn't in the right place for it right now.

fallingletters's review

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2.0

Brief thoughts originally published 14 July 2016 at Falling Letters.

The cover, description, and strong of praise of this book drew me to it. The back of the book includes quotes such as "The story's ferocity is matched by Matt Bell's glorious sentences: sinuous and darkly magical, they are taproots of the strange." and "This book, which will grip you in an otherworldly trance, reads like something divined from tea leaves or translated from a charcoal cipher on a cave wall". Unfortunately, I didn't get those feelings. The book fell short for me, though I can see where it would appeal to some. Not quite my type of mystical prose, though.

The third page lets you know what you're actually getting into. I read the paragraph quoted below, thought "Whoa wait did that actually just happen?" and had to go back to reread it. At that point I had to take a 24 hour break to reset my expectations for this book (despite all the clues, I thought it was going to be more like Gaiman or Valente).
Then no kiss at all, but something else, some compulsion that even then I knew was wrong but could not help, so strong was my sadness, so sudden my desire: Into my body I partook what my wife's had rejected, and while she buried her face in the red ruin of our blankets I swallowed it whole - its ghost and its flesh small enough to have in my fist like an extra finger, to fit into my mouth like an extra tongue, to fit slide farther in without the use of teeth - and I imagined perhaps that I would succeed where she had failed, that my want for family could again give our child some home, some better body within which to grow. (6)
When I tried to describe this scene to my Mom, I realized it sounds a lot crazier than it reads - "This guy eats his miscarried child and then he calls it the fingerling and it gives him bad ideas." (Her response: "I don't want to hear anymore about that book."). The prose is, in some sense, very poetic. There's a lot of dancing around actual actions.

I felt a bit squirmy awkward at the beginning that the man is already so opposed to his wife. I hoped to their relationship when it was fresh and loving. The man is an unlikable character (which is usually neither here nor there but he was the dominant character out of just a few and I didn't enjoy spending so much time in his head). I couldn't get over his attitude towards his wife.
"I dug more holes, and because I could not dig a hole without wanting for something to put in it, for the first time I began to kill what I did not intend to use: In one hole I buried a muskrat and in another a rabbit and in another a wrench-necked goose, caught by my own hands after it squawked me away from its clutch of goslings, themselves doomed beneath my frustrated heels" (43).


I seriously considered giving up around the halfway point. The man and the fingerling and their actions were beginning to bore me. Somehow, I persevered.

I wondered how the story could fill a whole novel. I certainly got a short story/novella vibe from it. I still wondered that by the end.

The atmosphere (and the endless cottage) brought to mind [b: House of Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1403889034s/24800.jpg|856555] at times.

The Bottom Line: Two stars for the prose that kept me reading (also driven by my curiosity of whether something more was going to happen), but I really should have DNF'd at that halfway point.

gay_for_jay's review against another edition

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4.0

Honestly this was dark and weird and heavy and hard to digest, but also a decent read. I had a friend let me borrow this book a while back but I never got around to reading it. I gave it back to them and recently decided to pick up my own copy.

Glad I did, because this was just out there enough to make it an enjoyable end of year read.

undermeyou's review

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4.0

I really loved this story. Bell did a great job mixing magical realism with bits of horror. I think maybe it was just too drawn out for me because I found myself losing focus many times.

lindsayclaire's review against another edition

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3.0

I just feel like this could have been stronger if it was edited down more. I enjoyed the themes but man was it a slog.