Book Review: A Voice Calling by Christopher Barzak

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“Of course the house is haunted.”

📚

Button House and its surrounding apple orchard have stood for so many generations that its builders and original inhabitants have been lost to history. The subject of much speculation, lore, and legend and a location rife with horrific violence and tragedy, the locale is best known for playing host to numerous deaths, disappearances, murders, and suicides. It is a haunted, deeply rooted place that consumes its occupants: the first forgotten residents (referred to as “the Blanks”), followed by the Olivers, and finally the Addlesons.

And when young Rose Billings — a local girl with otherworldly intuition — feels inexplicably drawn to the abode and quickly marries into the Addleson family, the community must decide whether it will sit by and lose another of its ilk, or whether it will attempt to intervene. Because Rose can hear both the house and its ghosts, and she’s determined to stay until she solves these mysteries, or perishes in the pursuit.

This macabre novella immediately captivates, calmly moving through years as it recounts dark, sinister, and twisted generational tales. The unique point of view (collective townspeople rather than any one individual) adds a wonderful sense of atmosphere, bolstering the creep and shock factor that comes with the “house as character” element. It’s a disturbing, binge-worthy story that packs a wallop in only 100 pages and contains ample material to expand into a full-length novel.

As I read A Voice Calling, Michael McDowell’s Southern Gothic masterpiece, Blackwater, came to mind, as this novella provides a similar, albeit it substantially condensed, experience: the reader is lulled by and ensconced in the fascinating world of Button House, a comforting conveyance of life over time — lives varied yet entwined and littered with gruesome acts and unsettling moments. Almost hypnotic in its smooth writing and seamless construction, it produces an ideal paradox that both satisfies and leaves the reader wanting more, a chronicle perfectly designed to linger and haunt.

Thank you to NetGalley and Psychopomp for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

❤Amanda

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