"In the House in the Dark of the Woods"

Laird Hunt's novels include Neverhome, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice selection, an IndieNext selection, winner of the Grand Prix de Litterature Americaine and The Bridge prize, and a finalist for the Prix Femina Etranger.

Hunt applied the Page 69 Test to his new novel, In the House in the Dark of the Woods, and reported the following:

Maternal rage, paternal ineffectiveness, torn cloth and distracted prayer all take the stage on page 69 of In the House in the Dark of the Woods. Which is to say that this page speaks loudly to and of the whole novel. The book explores all of these elements and what happens when, in their stern 17th century Puritan context, the resultant fissuring spreads out and across whole lives.

“A tale is a funny thing, and even when it’s your own and you have a quill in your hand you must be careful where you touch it,” my protagonist, known only as Goody, who has been handed a writing quill, thinks at the bottom of the page, so one of the book’s other central themes also gets evoked: to tell or not to tell the stories that we have been afflicted with… Considering the treacherous path Goody is walking, one would be forgiven for thinking it might be better not to poke such stories at all, better to leave them to bloom or fester in the shadows.

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My Book, The Movie: In the House in the Dark of the Woods.

Writers Read: Laird Hunt.

--Marshal Zeringue