This is true of the haunted house which Harry builds (later expanded into a truly magical attraction, the Wandering Dark) and the otherworldly City (seen in vignettes throughout, and later visited by Noah) inevitability also stalks the characters in the real world. Haunted houses are a recurring theme: offering both the illusion of choice and, as characters are herded through them, the horrors of inevitability. For the rest of the novel the focus is on Noah, and – Margaret’s story being presented with such aching empathy – it’s hard not to see him as a comparatively uninteresting subject. This is then snatched away as we turn back to six-year-old Noah and the scratching sounds being heard outside his sisters’ windows at night. Noah narrates all this the effect is jarring, particularly as Margaret’s portion of the text is a beautifully pitched narrative about the claustrophobia of her dwindling life options. It’s a striking opening image, which is quickly brushed aside as Hamill takes us on a “deep dive” for the next third of the book into his mother Margaret’s 1960s upbringing college life meeting his father (Harry) and their early married life in which Harry becomes troubled, obsessively building a haunted house in his backyard. The book begins with an interesting and only partly successful framing choice: Noah, a seven-year-old boy, collects his sister Eunice’s suicide notes.
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