Someone in the House (1981)

 


I Love a Rainy Night

With Anne's boyfriend Joe off in Europe on a grant, it seems like the perfect time for she and her colleague Kevin to finally write that English textbook they've been thinking about. The old mansion his parents recently bough in Pennsylvania seems like the perfect place. And at first, Grayhaven does seem like the perfect place. With his recently divorced Aunt Bea playing housekeeper for them, and her new boyfriend Roger O'Neill picking intellectual fights, they have a friendly quartet in residence. But soon Bea and Anne are puzzled by the strange noises echoing from Kevin's room at night...and then by what they see at his door...Everyone has their own theory about what's happening, from ghosts to psychic forces but the truth is far stranger than anything any of them could conjecture...

Someone in the House is a personal MPM favorite of mine, for a host of reasons. As a novel, it's a departure for her in some interesting ways. Oh sure, the general outline is the same--old, haunted house, a quartet of lovers (one set young, one set older), a host of fluffy pets underfoot, and a mystery rooted in history. But it bucks the trend of her previous works, managing to be both darker and more philosophical in tone.

When I say dark, I don't mean the dark of her earliest works (Prince and Darkness are what I'm thinking of, chiefly). It's a darkness not situated in the malice and evil of the darkest corners of people's hearts. It's the darkness of not letting beautiful daydreams trump reality. Which is a complicated story to write, and one that leaves a reader a little sad but also intellectually engaged. Anne makes her choice--it's not the one that gives her the traditional happily ever after, but it's the one that leaves her free. It's the one that challenges the reader to reexamine all the other happy endings in MPM's books that sometimes do feel a little too "tied up with a bow".

It is in fact one of the very few of her books to not end with romantic pairings littering the scenery. It's also the one where the historical mystery isn't easily resolved. It's not a ghost or a curse (or even a handsome merman). It's something entirely different--something vaguely Shirley Jackson. It's the house, become vaguely sentient over millennia of being lived in, and dedicated to preserving itself through infusing its owners with contentment--artificial, and as entrapping as a spider web, but satisfying. 

Anne's refusal to take the love of Kevin because it's the house directing him, rather than his own heart, is an act of such courage and independence that it bowls me over every time I read it. She lives with the lonely consequences of her choice forever, and even she admits it's not the one that makes her happy. But the alternative, for her, was unthinkable. And I will forever love our snarky, insecure, clever Anne because of that.

Rating: *****

Note:

*MPM returns to Grayhaven in 1982 with a prequel, Black Rainbow. 

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