Book Review: The Staircase in the Woods by Chuck Wendig

Popular culture has always been a reflection of the hopes and concerns of the general public at a particular moment in time, with horror in particular being well suited to handle the latter. What it says about us then that there has been a recent spate of titles focusing on the very nature of fear itself is up for you to decide, but it’s been an interesting time for the genre. We can now add prolific author Chuck Wendig to the list of those tackling the topic with his highly engaging latest.

In the late 90’s in Bucks County, PA, a group of five teenage best friends went camping in the woods near their homes. While there, they stumbled upon a strange staircase among the trees, with no evidence of a structure nearby to explain its existence. Matty went up the stairs and disappeared, never to be heard from again, and leaving the others to endure the hatred and accusations of a town that couldn’t believe they had nothing to do with his demise.

Decades later and having scattered to the wind, the now-very-distant friends are called back together when one in their group reaches out, asking for one final reunion since he has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. Despite barely speaking to one another anymore, they reconvene for another camping trip, where they once again discover a staircase. This time though, they all go up, hoping they can find their long-lost friend or at least some answers. What they find however is far stranger and more dangerous than they could have imagined.

The malevolent force they encounter feeds off of their pain and uses their fear to get the group increasingly agitated and hostile towards one another. It’s an effective metaphor for the ways that modern society and especially social media is doing the same to all of us on a daily basis, with increasingly disastrous results. As each of the group is forced to face the darkest parts of their pasts and psyches, many of us will recognize similar feelings that we’ve battled ourselves, helping to ground the otherwise fantastic proceedings and engendering a good deal of sympathy for the characters.

More eerie and foreboding than outright scary, the events of the story still linger with the reader. Wendig is a gifted writer, whose elegantly simple prose glides by while he slips in a host of modern social critiques. The Staircase in the Woods is an involving, deeply interesting examination of the weaponization of fear, but it’s also a touching tribute to the power of friendship. I don’t know if kindness and care can really solve all our current ills, but I’d like to think so. This book, despite being unafraid to go to some very dark places, serves as a strong argument that they could. ★★★★