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A review by doubleohelix
The House Next Door by Anne Rivers Siddons

dark mysterious fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

 
This book is either the most brilliant work of satire or the most out of touch dreck I’ve ever read, and I’m honestly not sure which it is. 

I’ll start out by saying that I can’t even remember exactly how I found this book, I feel like it was on a “similar to” list when I was reading articles about other books, and I saw a favorable review by Stephen King and figured I would give it a try.

I like to try and keep a few notes on books as I go; quotes I like or thoughts I have. I barely took any notes on this one but the sentence I jotted down 25 pages into reading pretty much summed up my initial thoughts while reading: “What a boomer-ass book this is”.

Everything presented by the protagonist in the book is emblematic of a time and place and attitude that is so far removed from the present day that it is completely unrelatable, and yet I felt as though the protagonist was constantly turning to me, the reader and saying “right, girl?” Colquitt (these names) spends a lot of time declaring she and her husband are not a part of the snobbish upper society and then proceed to do nothing but drink all afternoon, play tennis at ‘the club’, throw parties, attend parties, and vacation at their island home and New York City. They don’t have financial worries, marital worries, and plenty of time to spy on and butt into their neighbors’ business. I felt like by reading along I was being asked to cosign this version of a society that was completely vapid, soulless and cruel.

The introduction of the horror parts of the book were a welcome relief from the banality of their existence and also provided most of the (unintentional) comedy of the book. The “horrors” purported to be caused by this house in their neighborhood range are really just everyday struggles of humans, none of which seem to have an actual connection to the house except for the animal killings and mutilations. The humor came more from the reactions the neighborhood has to each event (the house turned people gay, the horror! The house made my teenage son knock up his girlfriend, the horror! The house made a child shit all over the floor during a dinner party, the horror! The adultery, the mental illness, the domestic violence, the horrors we have never seen as sheltered rich people!).

Now, what I hope is happening in this story is the author presenting the actual horror as the neighborhood, not the house. The real horror is having neighbors like these who intentionally blind and deafen themselves to the actual tragedies of humanity while smugly sitting back and professing to be relatable and good. What I hope is that we are intended to see the Kennedys' descent to madness through their own twisted values, the strangest reaction to “there goes the neighborhood” I have ever seen. 

The problem is I don’t know that this is the message, so I can’t rate it very high because it might just be someone believing this is a story about a brave couple who tried to defeat an evil house, and isn’t it sad that they had to lose their jobs and their status but you know, at least they won in the end. And that is just crazy.

 
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