Congratulate me, step right up, shake my hand

Two years ago, Angela thought things were changing for the better as she reconnected with her teenaged son and estranged husband. But then her son's sudden, unexplained suicide tore her life apart again, just as her mother's suicide had in her own childhood. Struggling with her grief, she returns to the house of her beloved, long-deceased grandmother, who was a Louisiana Creole vodou practitioner. Angela never believed in magic, but the more she discovers about her family's tragedies and the other strange events in this small town, the more it seems that her grandmother may have awakened a powerful and malevolent force that has been stalking her family for decades, and that only Angela can put it to rest.

I've read and enjoyed some of Due's short stories before but this is my first time reading one of her novels, and it didn't disappoint. Her deceptively plainspoken prose style belies its incisiveness; a hard-hitting line can sneak up and get you right in the gut. She has a great ear for dialogue and inner monologue. The book uses many POV characters to explore the plot from different angles, and every one feels like a fully realized person with their own voice. I especially appreciated her ability to write teenagers who sound like real teenagers and not an adult's idea of how a teenager thinks and feels.

It's a longer book and takes some time to set up all the moving pieces. But once it gets going, the plotting is tight and reveals happen exactly when they should, gradually building from weird events that could have a rational explanation to full-on supernatural horror that shatters Angela's beliefs about reality and herself. The scary parts of the book are scary not just because of what's happening, but because of what it means for these specific characters and their understanding of their world.

The one element that didn't hold my attention was the love triangle between Angela, her estranged husband, and her old high school boyfriend. It's not poorly written or anything, and it makes sense for the character and her arc, I'm just not the right audience for this kind of romance subplot where the lead has to choose between love interests. (Though I do think the author knew what she was doing in allowing her horror protagonist to be sexual and not punishing her for it, and was intentionally playing against sex-negative horror tropes and against stereotypes of Black women's sexualities, so in principle I appreciated what she was doing even though the way she did it wasn't my cup of tea.)

I was kind of ambivalent about the ending, which felt like punches were maybe pulled a little too much?

spoilers

Once Angela wins the battle against the evil spirit, time is turned back to before her son's death so that she can do things differently and save his life. I understand wanting to give her a happy ending after all she's been through, but I think it might be too happy and I felt it undercut the horror. We'd already established by then that Corey (the son) ended his life because he knew the baka (evil spirit) was about to force him to kill Angela, so it was actually a heroic end and an earned redemption for him, considering that his reckless attempts to use his great-grandmother's spells were how things had gotten so bad in the first place. I think it would have been enough for Angela to meet Corey's spirit when she meets her grandmother's and to get a chance to say she understands now what he did for her. Like, I'm not trying to be mean to the characters, I just felt it would have been more consistent with the themes of the book to reaffirm that sometimes the consequences of your actions can't be undone and you can't just use magic to fix everything.

But aside from that, I enjoyed the read and I'd like to check out some of her other books.

After taking the summer off from book club, I am rejoining for this collection of Asian folktale retellings by Asian authors. It was nice to see everybody again plus a couple of new faces!

Apparently nobody liked the book they read while I was gone, so I guess I dodged a bullet. Everyone seemed excited for the new one and liked that we finally found one with author's notes.


"Forbidden Fruit" by Roshani Chokshi

( The spirit of a mountain falls in love with a mortal. )


"Olivia's Table" by Alyssa Wong

( A second-generation 'exorcist' comes to a haunted town in Arizona to cook for the Hungry Ghost Festival. )


"Steel Skin" by Lori M. Lee

( After an android uprising, a girl believes her father is an android in disguise. )


"Still Star-Crossed" by Sona Charaipotra

( A young woman is stalked by the reincarnation of her mom's dead boyfriend. )

My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in my family is dead.

If that opening paragraph hasn't sold you, I'm not sure what else I can say. Shirley Jackson is a writer who makes me almost furious with love and envy; I know I'll never be that good, but at least I get to read someone who is.

The narrative proper begins with Merricat and Constance and their uncle Julian living in a large house on the outskirts of a small New England village where everyone loathes and fears them for reasons that aren't initially clear. Constance is agoraphobic and unable to leave their property, and Julian has cognitive and mobility impairments and requires constant care. Merricat seems obviously autistic, but is the family's only connection to the world outside their home, so she bears the brunt of the villagers' hateful stares and cruel comments when she ventures out for groceries and library books. Nonetheless, their life together is stable and predictable (as Merricat needs it to be)—until their estranged cousin Charles shows up and threatens to tear that stability apart.

I had this book under horror on my list, but it might also be categorized as a gothic mystery. What happened to the rest of the family? We hear one story of their demise early on, but the more we learn, the less it adds up. If it's not horror, though, it's at least horror adjacent, and one thing I loved about it is how it turns its horror tropes on their heads, using them to emphasize the power of the esoteric feminine and to align the narrative's sympathies with people who have been ostracized and rejected as monstrous.

spoilery thoughts

The villagers think Constance poisoned the other family members, but I never believed that. The fact that Merricat killed them and Constance covered it up is... I mean, it's barely even a twist, everything points to it. Means, motive, opportunity. But until it's spoken aloud, we don't really know, just as it seems it isn't quite real to Constance either until she says the words.

I see this book as a subversion of misogynist horror tropes—it's folk horror from the point of view of the witches. You see the townsfolk creating their myth of the murderous woman, complete with a Lizzie Borden-like playground rhyme and a dilapidated house that the kids dare each other to go near. Merricat uses magic of her own devising to protect herself (or she tries to) and Jackson names the image out loud, casually describing the sisters as looking like witches when they return from cleaning carrying their broomsticks. They represent contrasting feminine archetypes, with Constance as the tame and domestic caretaker who does not leave the home, and Merricat as the wild girl of magic and nature, accompanied by her familiar, Jonas the cat. Merricat's psychological and magickal battle to cleanse her home of the presence of greedy Cousin Charles is a battle to exert her will, to maintain female control and banish patriarchy once again.

Another angle the book takes on the ostracism of those seen as abnormal is that of disability. All three protagonists are disabled—Julian in his very visible wheelchair, Constance with her agoraphobia, and Merricat so clearly neurodivergent. I realize this was written in 1962 so this may not have been exactly how Jackson would have described her intentions, but for me as a reader the theme is very strong. To me it's the key to the sisters' relationship. Why does Merricat love Constance, why did she spare her? Because Constance accepted her differences instead of punishing her for them. I loved that Julian got his moment of power too, telling Charles off so satisfyingly and refusing to be dismissed.

The horror of the book is in the proverbial villagers with pitchforks, coming for the ones they see as monsters, to kill them with fire. But the triumph of the book is that they fail. The sisters' happy ending isn't to conform to the norms of the outside world, it's to make their own world together even if it's not one that others would understand. And in the end the villagers capitulate to it, even leaving gifts at their door which are framed as shamefaced apologies, but reading more like superstitious offerings to keep the witches' wrath appeased. These women are not nice, they're not safe, they're not under society's control—but they've won, even if to accomplish that they've had to go to unthinkable extremes.