The House That Eats The Dead by Max Doty

I would like to thank Tor Nightfire for a copy of this novel in exchange for a fair and honest review

Publisher – Tor Nightfire

Published – Out Now

Price – £22 hardback £0.99 ebook

The new house is a fresh start for Claire and her family. It’s a move towards the quiet suburban life she has craved since her turbulent childhood; a step up the corporate ladder for her husband, Tom; and a safe haven for their two children.

Yet, as they unpack their boxes, she senses something is wrong . . .

Fresh flowers dry up, store-bought eggs are inexplicably hollow and her daughter’s favourite toy disappears. Claire soon confronts a series of impossible truths: the house is hungry. It’s devouring anything that was once alive. And only Claire and Tom, the owners of the house, will remember that this ‘food’ ever existed.

When Claire exploits the house’s power in a moment of weakness, she and the house forge a fragile bond. But as its hunger intensifies and Claire starts to lose control, she fears who else might be drawn to her home – and what sinister appetites they’ll bring.

Moving house is often about finding where you want to be next in your life. Fresh starts, a sense of the ideal and yet often we find it then becomes a strange place we have to learn to get to know and discovering we have to compromise as the dream may be marred by the boiler needing replacing and the annoying neighbour across the apartment hallway…I do not of course speak from experience. In Max Doty’s horror novel The House That Eats The Dead a new home for a family soon becomes a much darker tale that by the end I felt had drawn out its unique idea a little too far.

Claire has always wanted to get out of the inner city of San Francisco and her family find a wonderful new home in a great area that sings to her and her offer is accepted. With two children, a hotshot lawyer husband in Tom and a loyal dog named King they are ready to live the life they’ve always wanted. And yet soon Claire spots this house isn’t quite right. Cardboard breaks down easily, food can go missing and even a beloved toy can vanish but strangely Claire is the only one often remembering things. Claire and Tom discover this house for reasons unknown can devour dead organic matter leaving no trace of it. This though offers temptations and nightmares they can’t yet imagine

I thought this one had a really interesting idea but ultimately doesn’t quite seem to know what to do with it. The story narrated to us by Claire captures a woman who realises she is suddenly middle-aged a parent and no longer the chaotic artists she once was. There are some interesting signs she soon questions whether if she is stuck in a dangerous house or stuck in a life that she isn’t entirely sure is for her. I thought this was handled quite well, and you sense a three dimensional character trying to work out where she goes next.

The house initially is a wonderfully disturbing idea. The warping of reality, the way things vanish I front of your eyes and where this leaves some dangerous moral decisions raises some key questions. Why yes, the house means you do not need to dust but anything dying will not just vanish but be erased from history. I will war you there is a brutal pet death, and this sets the seed that sometimes memories may be better erased. That soon escalates to bigger dilemmas, and I was hoping these big issues was where the story was going. Unfortunately Doty then wants to explain the House and also add a further threat and the latter in particular moves the story from a tense family drama to instead fairly thin corporate shenanigans that I felt moves the story into an over the top storyline that breaks the atmosphere and just falls flat.

For me this really needed to be a much shorter and tighter story that if it had just focused on the moral issues and didn’t descend into madness could have been more interesting and unsettling than it ultimately became. A very interesting start soon stalls, and I feel the story seems to have got lost in a spare room and can’t find its way out of it. Sadly, it did not quite work for me.