I’m a sucker for a haunted house story. There’s something about the evil or the horror invading a house–what is supposed to be our safe space–that just gets under my skin. When I picked up We Used to Live Here, that’s what I was expecting.
But that was only the tip of the iceberg.
After the dedication, the reader is treated to a document called “Old House Map.” There are a few architectural drawings overlaid on each other, hand-written notes, typed notes (which are numbered), scribbled arrows seeming to show directions, and a portion of a cipher key. Obviously, nothing is clear yet, but immediately intriguing. This quickly became more than just a haunted house story. The story focused more on the character of Eve and Mandela effects.
The Mandela effect is when there is a commonly held belief or opinion about something that is verifiably false. One example is the origin of the name: that many people believe that Nelson Mandela died in prison, rather than the reality that he went on to be president of South Africa. For a list of common Mandela effects, go here.
Unreliable narrators can be a tricky thing to manage as a writer. If you’re going to limit your narrative to the perspective of one character and then have that character be unreliable, that means that your whole story is unreliable. This runs the risk of having a payoff along the lines of “and then they woke up and it was all a dream.” Unsatisfying and kind of a screw you to the reader.
In this story, though, that’s the whole point.
Eve starts off the story as a neurotic mess already. It’s actually pretty surprising for her character that she would let Thomas and his family, who are strangers to her and her partner, into the house in the first place. That’s probably the weakest part of the story, or at least the part that makes the least sense to me. But Eve is framed as a people pleaser, so we’re just going with it.
Whenever I read or watch a horror movie that has supernatural elements to it, I start looking for evidence. Is this happening in the character’s mind or is something really happening? In this story, that’s exactly the point of the narrative. Is what we’re reading actually happening to Eve, or is she the crazy one? During the story, I don’t think that I was ever not on her side.
The “supporting documentation” helped with that. Between chapters of the main story, there are articles, excerpts of interviews, online posts with comments, and other narrative bric-a-brac that supports Eve’s understanding of what is reality and what is changing around her. While I think that these bits are intriguing and add to the story, I wonder if the story would be more effective at making the reader doubt Eve and themselves (and what they’ve read) without them. But I suppose their inclusion indicates that we’re not ever supposed to not be on Eve’s side.
Kudos are definitely due to Kliewer for his subtle inclusion of Morse code into these supporting documents. I think I was a few chapters in before a noticed that each supporting document ended with a bit of Morse code. I grabbed my phone and started translating, then I had to laugh. A book hasn’t gotten me to do something like that since Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, which this story clearly emulates. A more obvious nod is a character in one of the supporting documents having the username “Navidson.”
Overall, I enjoyed the story very much. I thought building a horror story around the Mandela effect was a fresh take and worked well. I’d definitely recommend this one.
