Book
The Twisted Ones by T. Kingfisher
Synopsis
Melissa, nicknamed “Mouse,” has been asked by her father to help clean out the home of her recently-deceased grandmother. She travels alone with her dog to the house, deep in the woods of North Carolina, and discovers that in addition to being cruel and abusive, the woman had been a hoarder. As she’s sorting through years’ worth of collected trash, she discovers a hidden diary written by her grandmother’s second husband. It contains an unsettling description of a Green Book that has been hidden somewhere in the house, his encounters with strange creatures in the woods, and a repeated litany that includes the line I twisted myself like the twisted ones. She starts searching for the Green Book that might help explain the man’s descent into madness, and she begins to realize that there is something outside the house at night, trying to get inside.
Notes
This is the first book I’ve read by T. Kingfisher, and I’m still not sure what to make of it. I definitely enjoyed it, but it wasn’t at all what I’d expected.
In particular, the tone was so lighthearted that it often felt like it was somehow a parody of itself. Mouse is frequently making wisecracks and half-serious observations about the things that are going on, while the things that are going on are all straight out of a folk horror story. And a genuinely creepy one at that.
It almost seems like it’d be easier to process if it had been so flippant that it was no longer scary. But there are descriptions of being alone in the house at night, with rooms left unexplored, and with strange things outside, that are extremely effective. Especially if you’re reading it in bed in the dark.
At the same time, there’s a cast of other characters who join Mouse to help her out, going past the role of comic relief and joining in the wisecracks. It almost feels like a self-imposed writing challenge, to put as many elements into the story as possible to completely deflate any sense of tension and isolation, but still somehow make it scary.
The afterword for the book explains that it was inspired by a letter by HP Lovecraft, which was commenting on a real 19th-century horror story called The White People. Some of the character names, plus the format of a partially-remembered account of a lost book, are taken from that story. The Twisted Ones is a really interesting, contemporary take on that format so common to turn-of-the-20th-century horror, where horrific events are described second- or third-hand from letters or journals, stories within stories within stories.
Verdict
It seems like the book simply shouldn’t work as well as it does. Using the tone of something like a Douglas Adams novel to tell a folk horror story feels like it should be a disaster, too flippant to be genuinely scary, and yet I found myself sufficiently creeped out at all the right moments.
I think T. Kingfisher starts to make a lot more sense when you learn that the pen name is Ursula Vernon wearing the hat of “whatever this is, it is too spicy for middle schoolers”. (She does love big hats.) Which is not to dismiss either catalog, Vernon has written some incredibly deep things for middle schoolers and Kingfisher has some incredibly middle school silly things for those that want deep, dark and/or disturbing fictions. I appreciate that both exist, they make the world better and stranger. Vernon is a delightful person, too, on stage and at readings.
I was vaguely aware that her books tended to be lighthearted, but was still surprised at how far this one went in that direction while still managing to work as creepy folk horror. Thinking of it as young adult fiction not aimed at young adults makes a lot more sense.