The Hollow Places

The Hollow Places is a horror novel by T. Kingfisher. The premise is that newly divorced Kara goes back to live in her uncle's curio museum; when a mysterious hole in the wall appears and goes to what seems to be another dimension, she and her barista friend investigate. Overall, horror is not usually my cuppa but this was an enjoyable creepy ride (and I'll read anything by T. Kingfisher at this point).

But he groaned and stomped around the hall for a few minutes, then said, "Okay. But this is how people die in horror movies, you know."

"You're not the teensiest bit curious?

"I'm incredibly curious! I've just also seen horror movies!"

This book is intensely creepy at times, and the horror elements all the more unsettling for being fuzzy and unseen and unknowable. I wish a little that there was a little bit more character development or reveal (such as a more tight thematic coupling of Kara's backstory or marriage with the present events). However, I really enjoyed both the banter and also the centering of the museum as a welcoming and protective home rather than playing it just for creeps.

The author's note said that this was based on the 1907 short story The Willows, by Algernon Blackwood and I wish I had read that first so that I could understand some references that would have passed me by otherwise.

There's a recurring mention of negative space in this book, specifically how the gaps themselves between a tree's leaves and branches can appear to be in the shape of something that isn't (couldn't? shouldn't?) be there. Stepping back from it and looking at the book as a whole, I feel like I can see everything I wanted it to do in all of the things it didn't.

The premise and setup is easy enough to follow; a recent divorcee is down on her luck and crashes at her eccentric uncle's place until she can get back on her feet. Said uncle owns a tourist trap in a small town in the Carolinas, and when a knee surgery takes him out of commission for a while, Kara's forced to hold down the fort by her own. One day she finds a new hole in one of the walls, she goes through with the barista next door, and cosmic horror hijinks ensue.

(Sidenote: This book heavily referenced The Willows by Algernon Blackwater, which I'm still kicking myself for not having read yet. Maybe I would have gotten more enjoyment out of it if I could catch all the references that I knew were going over my head.)

I was really invested... for the middle third of this book. But then the interesting bit got resolved sooner than I expected it to. Which on its own is fine; it's certainly not a bad thing to have my expectations subverted. It just felt like the book sort of tread water after that point after losing all the momentum it had built up beforehand. And after a strange episode that felt a little campy to me and like something out of some gimmick 80's horror B-film, the book climaxes after going through what I guess I would call a "subgenre shift." Still firmly horror, just not the same kind that the story began with.

Not exactly what I personally was looking for, but this would be a safe recommendation to someone new to the genre that wanted something that didn't lean on old tropes too hard. Certainly no serial killers slashing up teens in the woods or any kind of monster you'd recognize from other media going on here.

1) "Earl believes strongly in Jesus, Moses, the healing power of crystals, the Freemasons, the Illuminati, that aliens landed at Roswell but the government is suppressing it, secret histories, faith-healing, snake-handling, that there is an invention that will replace gasoline but the oil companies are suppressing it, chemtrails, demon-possession, the astonishing powers of Vicks VapoRub, and that there’s proof that aliens contacted the Mayans and the Aztecs and probably the Egyptians, but the scientists are suppressing it. He believes in Skunk Ape, Chupacabras, and he positively adores Mothman. He is not Catholic, but he believes in the miracle of Fatima, visions of Mary appearing on toast, and he is nearly positive that the end times are upon us, but seems to be okay with this, provided it does not interfere with museum hours."

2) "The final object in the box was wedged crosswise to fit. It was a wooden carving, about the size of my forearm. Uncle Earl unwrapped it on the counter and paused, slowly crumpling the newspaper in his hands. 'Yech,' I said. 'That’s a creepy one.' He picked up the card and read, 'Carved corpse-otter effigy, Danube area, circa 1900.' 'Corpse-otter?' 'That’s what Woody says….' Uncle Earl slid off the stool and actually came out from behind the counter to study the carving from both sides. 'What a strange piece.'"

3) "If you play video games, sometimes you’ll encounter a bug where you suddenly fall through the world. Something goes wonky and the landscape that is pretending to be solid suddenly isn’t. And you fall through and suddenly you see that the whole virtual world is just a skin a pixel deep, and you’re looking at it from the back, like a stage set viewed from behind. All the shapes are still there, all the rocks and mountains and trees, but inverted. You can stand inside things that looked solid just a minute ago and look up through trees that are suddenly chimneys. I was getting the strangest feeling that the willows were somehow like that. If I dug one up, it wouldn’t have roots, it would just be attached to the sand, a thin willow-shaped skin made of the same stuff as the islands and the river. As if the willows and the river were… not artificial, exactly, but behind them was something vast and hollow. Hollow, but not empty."

4) "I closed my eyes against the light, which didn’t help. On the backs of my eyelids, I could picture my friends and neighbors running down the street while some unseen thing overhead hummed and chimed and unraveled their flesh until they fell down in their tracks, not alive but not nearly dead enough."

 Come on, let’s go back to the coffee shop and I’ll make us Irish coffees and we’ll discuss this like people who don’t die in the first five minutes of a horror movie.

All books that, to whatever extent, comply with the traditional Western three-act structure have this part. The beginning of Act I. The introduction. The part before the real adventure starts. It serves to present just enough information about the setting and the overall situation, to introduce the reader to the protagonist, and to hook the reader into the story; to get them invested into the things to come. Some stories, while having overall strong beginnings, don't exactly nail the "hook" part. Maybe they start too early. Maybe they don't put all the focus in the right place. Regardless, it may so happen that by the time the real plot starts unfolding, some readers are already invested in "the world before."

I feel that The Hollow Places is one such story. In all fairness, the stars I'm giving this book mostly come from the first 3-4 chapters. The ones where the characters got introduced, and Carrot kept allowing herself to get distracted from the divorce aftermath by reading fanfic and drinking coffee, and she and Simon were the ultimate dry witty comedic duo exploring that one weird corridor. The ones where the stakes were more personal and everything was full of that special warmhearted quirkiness T. Kingfisher does so well.

And then Carrot and Simon landed in what one of the reviewers called Narnia from Hell and the horror started in earnest. And hey, I picked up this book for the horror! I loved The Twisted Ones, the author's previous horror novel, and I expected to love The Hollow Places just as much. But, unfortunately, I didn't. Oh, the horror is good, make no mistake! It's vivid and visceral, and I love how Kingfisher describes the way her characters interact with horror, the way it slips inside and changes them. The Narnia from Hell was quite the experience. But I kept thinking back to those early 4 chapters and I couldn't help but feel disappointed that, while the story I was actually reading was good, I wasn't getting to read that story I felt I was promised by those chapters. The quirky, weird, more personal one, with potential for more magical realism than horror. So it was kind of... hard to enjoy the story that I was getting and made me focus less on what was going on and more on the moments that reminded me of the promise of the early chapters.

It's a good book, regardless. But maybe the beginning was a little too good? Idk.