The first book I read this year is John Darnielle’s Devil House, his third novel to date and one I had on my reading list even before 2022 got started. You may remember how much I loved his second novel, Universal Harvester, a book that continues to haunt and inspire me five years on. In some ways, you could almost imagine Devil House as the direct continuation of that book – look what happened to that video store when it started losing business! – though in fact it has no connection at all, save being the next chapter of Darnielle’s incredibly personal literary project. The way in which Darnielle uses the small town canvas to illustrate larger themes and examine important moral questions is laid almost painfully bare in Devil House. Darnielle has said in interview that his third novel took five years to write. It is easy to see why, and we should feel grateful that he allowed himself the time this book required. Devil House has a lot to say, and it says it beautifully.
“It matters which story you tell, it matters whose story you tell, it matters what people think even if it doesn’t matter to the people who needed it before the disaster hit. That’s the thing, those of us on this side of the disaster, we get so dazzled by the fireworks, by the conflagration I want to say, that we don’t see the gigantic expanse over there on the other side of the flames, but, you know. People have to live there.”
The premise of Devil House is simple and – as with Universal Harvester – it can trick you into thinking you know what’s coming. Gage Chandler is a true crime writer. His first book, The White Witch of Morro Bay, was an instant bestseller, and set him up for future successes. When his editor presents him with a new storyline and a novel approach to it, Chandler is initially sceptical – purchase an actual murder house? Go to live there? – but in the end he is unable to resist. He has personal links to the location, and location, above all, has always been intensely important to him. Also, there is a sense that this particular case has been brushed under the carpet.
The book we are reading, Chandler tells us early on, is the book he eventually came up with. It is not exactly the book he set out to write, not the book his regular fanbase might be expecting. Those who enjoy metafiction were always going to love this. Those who like straight thrillers, probably not so much. But what captivated me most about Devil House is the true subject of the book, that is, the problematical nature of true crime literature: why do we read it, should we be reading it and why do these questions matter? They are questions that have been on my mind for a while now, not least because I read and enjoy a lot of true crime literature.
The past eighteen months have taken this one stage further, though, because I have been working with a true crime narrative as part of my novel-in-progress.
It was Darnielle’s own obsession with true crime as a younger reader that kick-started Devil House – he has a lot to say about this here, and it’s a marvellous interview. I think it’s important to remember that true crime has changed and evolved a great deal since the days of the more blood-soaked, sensationalist and killer-obsessed narratives that tended to dominate the genre in the 70s and 80s when Darnielle was first consuming it. In the decades since, we have not only seen the pioneering work of writers such as Gordon Burn and David Peace, novels and creative non-fiction that takes on the subject of crime and particular criminals in a markedly different way, but more latterly the work of writers such as Sarah Weinman, Hallie Rubenhold, Nona Fernandez, Alice Bolin, Selva Almada, Rachel Monroe and Natasha Tretheway have made still further progress in revealing particular events and people more fully within the context of their social and political background.
None of which makes the stories they tell any less compelling. But they do ask us to consider why we are drawn to these narratives, a powerful and necessary question that deserves to be at the centre of any true crime story, no matter who is telling it.
Reading Devil House just as I am starting work on the second draft of what should hopefully be my next novel has been a fascinating, often startling and occasionally sobering experience as I stumble up against a deeply admired writer’s narrative responses to questions I have been asking myself. The story I happen to be working with is almost a century old; realistically speaking, anyone with a personal connection to the case must now be dead, a fact that does make some of these questions easier to deal with, though it does not make them irrelevant, especially as my treatment of the material is unorthodox. I do have other material on my hard drive, a project-in-embryo relating to a much more recent case. I am letting it lie for now, firstly because it’s still far from complete, secondly and more importantly because I don’t think it would be right to publish it yet.
The question of when it would be right is one I am still grappling with. Which is as it should be. All of this stuff comes up in Devil House, which is a huge part of why I love it.
I don’t have a particular plan for my reading in the year ahead. But I would like to steer towards books that feed, that seem to comment on, that feel in tune with my own evolving process and areas of interest. My new novel Conquest, which comes out in May, feels to me like the beginning of a new phase in my work, one I am excited about and challenged by. People have sometimes asked me if writing a book is something that gets easier with time, and there are ways in which it does, or at least it should do. You know you can go the distance, and you know you can always write more sentences about pretty much anything. But in the deeper sense, I would say no, it does not. With time comes the knowledge that writing good sentences is only the beginning. For writing to mean anything, it has to go further, into areas that might not feel comfortable, or easy. You have to make your writing count for something.
Which is terrifying, but entirely as it should be.