2021-04-20
In this novel, a man cares for two older people who may not be as innocent as they seem.
Mark Norman is a handsome man who is en route to an important job interview when this story opens: “If he gets the position, it will change his life.” But as he sits on a Minnesota bus, Mark has no idea how drastically this job will alter him. He arrives at his destination, Alden Manor, a building that may have once been impressive but is now in a run-down area of the city. A derelict on the corner warns Mark that anyone who enters the house doesn’t “come out the same,” yet this harbinger does little to dissuade Mark from going into Alden Manor and meeting his future employers, brother and sister Roy and Alma Waldegrave. Very quickly, he has earned the job of helping care for the older siblings and aiding their other caregiver, Lisa, with errands and chores. The Waldegraves are incredibly wealthy and, in addition to paying Mark an inordinate salary for very little labor, treat him to nice dinners and new clothes. Mark is quickly enamored with Roy and Alma, and he hopes to ingratiate himself in their favor to continue to make good money. But Lisa warns him that “sometimes it feels like the walls are breathing and putting thoughts in my head. I get the most awful dreams too.” She shows him the manor’s second floor, where a cavernous room houses photographs of a mysterious group called The Redevine Society, a name, Lisa will later pen in her journal, that “is a cipher.” Young’s gripping narrative moves at a brisk pace that will hold readers’ attention until the very end. Lisa steadily becomes more and more unhinged, and her paranoia and fear slowly affect Mark as he becomes, at times, too “afraid to move, too frightened” in the dusty manor. But many of the tropes and plot points (an old house, a slightly idiosyncratic but endearing older couple, overheard chanting, an anagram, and an untrustworthy doctor) are very similar to such novels as Ira Levin’s Rosemary’s Baby. While the writing is propulsive in Young’s story, the plot points can sometimes feel stale.
A well-written but familiar horror tale about the perils of greed.
