A review by sonofthunder
House of Stairs by William Sleator

4.0

So I'd not read this book in years and years. Honestly, I think I read this when I was maybe 12 or 13? Hard to recall, but I seem to remember it being in an anthology of sorts. Recently got reminded of it and was able to track down a copy to read again! This book really stuck in my memory, so re-reading it was a bit of a nostalgia trip. This is a short book - would probably be classified as YA these days? - and easy to knock out in a few hours, but in my mind very worth it! Some good old-fashioned 70s sci-fi dystopia? Sure. Anyway - I will spoil a bit so go no further if you don't want to be spoiled - but this book is about five orphans who get stuck in this weird tower...with staircases everywhere, and no visible entrances or exits...and no accessible roof or floor...and the kids have no idea where they are or why they're there. It's pretty easy to figure out early on it must be some kind of experiment and thus it is. A conditioning experiment, to be sure, run in quite horrific fashion, to determine if the kids can be made to do anything as long as they are properly rewarded (by food). Of course, the majority of this you don't find out for sure until the very end, so the beauty of this book is that you feel trapped and confused along with the kids as you read. You don't understand what's going on or what the kids are supposed to be doing. What is this tower of stairs? What is this food machine doing? Where are the "grown ups"? And so the imagery in this book really stuck with me and I to this day have the memory in my head of these kids traversing the stairways, dancing for food and everywhere white light. Very strong visual imagery, although that may just be my overactive childhood imagination! Still, it's a great concept and Sleator executes it brilliantly. The only thing that horrifies me even more now is seeing how terrible some of these kids are. Blossom and Oliver in particular are just brutal and nasty. Abigail eventually slides into depravity as well. Maybe it's been too long since I was sixteen, but I was just stunned by how terrible these kids were. Of course, that's probably part of the point. Deprive people of food and peace and comfort...and put them in a strange environment...and watch their true nature come out. It's inspiring (as it's meant to be) to see Peter and Lola fight the machine and slowly starve instead of obeying the cruel dictates of their torture chamber. And as for the other kids...well, they are broken and the book doesn't end with much hope for them. This book is brilliantly imaginative and darkly horrific and while the characters aren't given a lot of depth, they are all very distinctive to be sure. I was also impressed by the dialogue - sometimes authors aren't good at writing kids' dialogue, but this felt pretty appropriate (to the time) to how kids actually talk. Really glad I re-read this (approximately twenty years since the last time I read it...)