Book Review: "Nowhere"
Allison Gunn's horror debut is a chilling delight filled with Appalachian folklore, small-town terror, and deep human trauma.
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Warning: Full spoilers for the book follow.
I had the distinct pleasure of meeting Allison Gunn during a book signing that we both did a couple of months ago in Shepherdstown, West Virginia (it was at Four Seasons Books, a truly splendid indie bookshop, by the way). Gunn was signing copies of her debut horror novel, Nowhere, a haunting piece of Appalachian gothic focusing on a woman living in western Virginia who has to contend with both implosion of her marriage as well as a sinister force that dwells in the forest nearby and abducts children.
Of course, me being me, I knew that I was going to have to read it. I’m a sucker for Appalachian horror, the more eldritch the better, and I knew as soon as I sat down to start reading Nowhere that this was going to be a novel that was going to stick with me. Indeed, this was a book that I literally could not devour it. I read the entire thing in just a few days, and each night when I’d finish I’d have to make sure that all of my lights were turned on so that I could get to sleep.
I’m telling you, it’s that scary.
The book moves through several different points of view, but the most notable and consistent are those of the central family: Rachel, her husband Finn, and their children Charlie and Lucy. They’re all haunted by the death of Aiden, who perished after Finn crashed the family car while driving drunk. Compounding all of this trauma is the fact that strange things have been happening in the woods near the small Virginia town where they all live and, as the mystery deepens, Rachel and her family find themselves having to contend not just with the animus of their fellow townspeople but also with sinister beings that might just be from another world.
What’s particularly surprising, and refreshing, about Nowhere, is the extent to which it plumbs the dark depths of the human psyche. It’s my belief that horror is the most effective when it isn’t just about the jump scares or the supernatural, though those are obviously crucial elements in any scary story. Both Rachel and Finn–and, to a lesser extent, Lucy and Charlie–are broken people contending with the darknesses in their own souls. Trauma and addiction have left deep scars on all of the characters, and some of the most terrifying and unsettling moments are those in which they have to face up to what’s going on inside of their own heads.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t some genuine supernatural horror moments, because there are. For example, we get a ringside seat to the moment when Charlie, having ventured into the woods with her friends, is taken over by the mysterious beings that inhabit areas where the boundaries between our world and theirs are perilously thin. Though we don’t know it at the time, this will be the last time that we get to spend time with the real Charlie. Thereafter, she will be known as the “Charlie Thing,” which is a brilliantly terrifying way to refer to a point of view character.
Gunn doesn’t shy away from her characters’ flaws and shortcomings. Indeed, Rachel is not the most likable heroine, but the novel makes it clear that there are some very good reasons for the way that she acts and thinks. This is a woman, after all, who found herself trapped in a marriage with a man she didn’t particularly love, a man whose substance abuse led to the death of their son, arguably the only bright spot in their marriage. This is also a woman who has had to push down her queer desires in order to both make her marriage work and to fit in in a town that is notable for its frowning disapproval of queer existence and queer love.
Finn, for his part, is an even more tortured character, and while I wouldn’t go so far as to say that he’s likeable or entirely redeemed, Nowhere does at least show that he wasn’t as responsible for Aiden’s death as it seemed at first. The beings that haunt the woods, it turns out, are remarkably cunning, and Rachel and her family are but pawns in a game for which they don’t even know the rules. The further the novel goes on, the more it becomes clear that all of Rachel’s moral authority and her understanding of the world and how it works–to say nothing of her skills as a member of law enforcement–haven’t prepared her for the scale of what she’s facing. Even when it’s clear that Charlie is no longer what she wants was, she sees this as the effects of drugs rather than the truth: that her daughter has been replaced by a sinister doppelganger.
In the end, both Rachel and Finn meet a fate that is rather tragic yet also fitting. Once the entire town is taken over by the sinister beings, and once the townsfolk have essentially destroyed themselves in their madness, they ultimately see no other future but to embrace their own death. It’s really quite a chilling moment, and a sign that Gunn is an author who takes no prisoners.
It’s really the very ending of the book, though, that has the most devastating stinger, since the Lucy Thing is picked up by the police, who interpret her rather strange behavior as the result of trauma rather than the fact that she’s a demon masquerading as a human. There’s something particularly chilling about the fact that it’s a child–and one that we got to spend so much time with–that now has the potential to spread this terrible affliction to the wider world. By this point we know there’s very little these beings can’t and won’t do. After all, they care nothing for human life and in fact seem to have it in mind to invade our world. In other words: what an ending!
Nowhere is one of those novels that manages to be so disturbing because so much remains unexplained. The sinister others who have taken over the town may be creatures akin to the Fairy Folk of so much folklore, or they may be something else. Who’s to say? Gunn’s skill lies in leaving so much to our own tortured imaginations. We can never really know what lurks in those hills and hollers of isolated Appalachia.
One thing’s for sure, though. I’ll definitely be keeping the lights on the next time I visit my folks in West Virginia.