Book Review: Another by Paul Tremblay

Paul Tremblay has made a name for himself writing horror novels for adults, like the chilling Horror Movie and profoundly frightening The Cabin at the End of the World, often toying with and confounding readers’ expectations to create memorable if sometimes polarizing stories. Having spent time as a teacher and youth basketball coach, it was perhaps only a matter of time before he wrote a book for young readers to help indoctrinate them to the cathartic pleasures of the genre while still possibly inducing a nightmare or two.

Young Casey Wilson is surprised by the appearance of a rotary phone in his house that his parents picked up the item in an antique store. Seeing as they have been out of common use for decades, he is confused by how to operate it. Nevertheless, his mother and father seem happy with the purchase and get it hooked up to a landline, claiming it could come in handy if cellular service were to go down (to which Casey asks who they would then call with it). To everyone’s surprise, it doesn’t take long before it rings. It turns out to be a man asking if his son, purportedly one of Casey’s friends, can come to spend the night, which his mom assents to. This wouldn’t be odd in and of itself, except that due to an embarrassing incident that took place over Zoom during his school’s Covid-19-induced hybrid learning program, Casey didn’t really have any friends anymore and was struggling with loneliness and anxiety.

That night, an eerie man appears at their door carrying a burlap sack and is inexplicably let in by Casey’s parents, who are beginning to behave strangely, possibly due to the influx of mysterious white dust (pollen?) accumulating throughout the house. Equally confusing, they aren’t phased at all when the man puts down the bag and a peculiar looking boy emerges. Introducing him as Casey’s friend Morel, despite Casey having never met him before, he exchanges a few pleasantries, imparts some instructions, and leaves.

Casey is understandably disturbed by what has just transpired, but his parents are acting as if the whole incident is perfectly normal and so he goes along with it, even beginning to find himself welcoming the company of the strange arrival. But as the sleepover spills past one night after another and things around his house become stranger and more sinister, Casey becomes increasingly alarmed and tries to figure out exactly what is happening to his family and himself before it becomes too late.

Tremblay is able to capture the voice of a middle school child very convincingly. Using realistic emotions and thought processes to explain why the character would make the choices that they do, he inspires deep sympathy for the character, which in turn makes the events that transpire more suspenseful and believably eerie. While this may be a children’s book, it is genuinely disquieting and will likely give readers of any age the creeps.

Older readers are likely to piece together where things are headed pretty early on, but that knowledge does nothing to lessen the story’s ability to induce a sense of dread as it hurtles towards a finale that is as heartbreaking as it is scary. Tremblay’s adult fiction tends to rely on ambiguousness to deliver chills, but he spells everything out here, and in so doing has crafted a memorably frightening tale that uses its fable-like atmosphere to contend with some of adolescence’s more painful emotions and fears. ★★★★★