A House at the Bottom of a Lake by Josh Malerman

Published in the UK (small press) in 2016; published by Del Rey on January 19, 2021

The title encapsulates the plot. Two 17-year-old virgins go canoeing on a date. They paddle from one lake to a second lake, where they find a tunnel that leads to a third, swampier lake. There they find a perfectly preserved house at the bottom of the lake. Its roof is visible from the lake’s surface but the house is apparently a secret. They decide that the underwater house would be a great place to lose their virginity.

James and Amelia feel drawn to the house, as if by a supernatural force. They eventually get some scuba gear so they can spend time exploring the house and each other. They even build a raft so they can sleep on the lake. They don’t want to know how or why the house exists, how or why its furniture and teacups remain perfectly in place rather than floating away, how or why rugs stay flat on the floor and show no sign of damage, how and why dresses are moving through the water as if worn by an invisible woman.  Apparently, they are worried that rational thought would destroy the magic. Eventually the magic is destroyed by the onset of creepiness. There’s a monster or a presence or a something in the house because how could there not be?

The House at the Bottom of a Lake isn’t marketed as YA fiction but I would only recommend it to young adults. The plot is unsophisticated. The young lovers are the only characters of any importance and almost the only characters to appear. The sex is far from graphic. Josh Malerman’s prose is simple (almost juvenile). All of which is fine if you’re fifteen and wondering what it would be like to lose your cherry underwater, although the absence of pain and blood won’t give kids a realistic view of virginity’s loss.

Is The House a horror novel? Probably, but it’s too dull to be frightening. Is The House a love story? Too much of it is — and a sappy love story, at that — but the idea of seventeen-year-olds bonding over a house at the bottom of a lake is so unconvincing that I was unmoved by their puppy love. The ending attempts to make a dramatic statement about the ephemeral nature of young love but the story is so lacking in drama that adult readers are likely to shrug their shoulders and hope that the next book they read will be better.

The novel’s first climax suggests what the house is made from but doesn’t explain its existence because no explanation is possible. The novel’s final climax is silly and anticlimactic. The story is too simplistic to hold the interest of most adult readers.

Horror novels are based on fear, not rationality, although the best horror novels are based on rational fears. I don’t necessarily expect a horror novel to make sense (apart from the internal logic that the author constructs) but I do expect a horror novel to be frightening. This one isn’t. We’re often told that James is “more scared than he’s ever been” but we don’t feel the fear. Nor did I ever get the sense that James and Amelia were particularly imperiled. Maybe a YA audience would react differently, but since the book isn’t marketed as YA fiction, I can’t recommend it.

NOT RECOMMENDED