In Wolf, the disfigured, reclusive narrator runs a Choose Your Own Adventure–style game called Trace Italian, conducted entirely on paper, with strangers, via the United States Postal Service. In other, smaller, more concrete instances, Darnielle commemorates aspects of our pre-internet culture, a time when information was elusive and mystery was everywhere. At times the anticipated loss is of something as universal as youth, or the relationship between parents and their children who are approaching adulthood and leaving home. These novels are like fingers straining to keep hold of an object relentlessly slipping away. But reading Devil House, a strange, enthralling novel, precipitated a binge through Wolf in White Van and Universal Harvester, books with an idiosyncratic flavor most unlike the usual run of literary fiction, even if they share some of its concerns. I still don’t care about the Mountain Goats (or indie rock bands in general, really). Most novels by celebrities don’t need to be much good, which is fortunate because they never are any good, or at least that’s what I believed until I said, “What the hell?” and picked up a copy of Darnielle’s latest, Devil House.Ī couple of chapters in, I had to admit I’d been wrong-at least about Darnielle. For that reason, I assumed that his fiction would ease into publication, that it would be read and positively reviewed by critics who are Mountain Goats fans, and that it would sell fairly well to the same people who buy the band’s albums-all regardless of its quality. I knew that Darnielle leads the Mountain Goats, an indie rock band with a fervent following.

This, despite never having read a page of either Wolf or its follow-up, 2017’s Universal Harvester, and even despite the National Book Award nomination Wolf scored. Slate has relationships with various online retailers.īut note that deals can expire and all prices are subject to change.Īll prices were up to date at the time of publication.Ī confession: From the publication of John Darnielle’s first novel, Wolf in White Van, in 2014, I’d thought of his books as skippable.

Devil house book review