One of the most frightening things about the idea of a home invasion is the vast unknown of what the intruders want. Why would they come into your home – are the seeking violence? Money? Revenge? If our safety can be so easily upturned, we yearn desperately to be able to compartmentalize and thus counter-attack – what can we offer to restore our equilibrium? In Paul Tremblay’s version of a home-invasion, the reader is invited to consider these questions along with the characters. Would we offer our own sanity? What parts of ourselves would we sacrifice to make the madness stop?
Eric and Andrew are on vacation with their daughter, Wen, whom they adopted from China years ago. Wen is an intelligent seven year old who loves nature and has a naturally curious mind. Eric and Andrew have selected a cabin in the New Hampshire woods removed from the reaches of cell phone service, all the better to focus on family time. The novel begins with Wen’s point of view, what seems like a few days into this vacation (soon enough that they’re a bit familiar with the territory and the layout of the home, not yet thinking about returning to the world). They are surprised by four strangers (the home invaders). Soon enough these strangers announce that their goal is to prevent the apocalypse – by asking an impossible sacrifice on the part of this family.
What ensues is a fast paced, often devastating account of how Eric and Andrew respond to these demands. Tremblay doesn’t shy away from gripping, even violent scenes, while also giving the characters (especially the main family) a fair bit of interiority. We see Eric grapple with his Catholic background, while also battling a severe concussion. Andrew, for his part, is an atheist and a skeptic. They have also fallen into their family roles so deeply – Daddy Eric being the stable, rational dad and Daddy Andrew bringing greater whimsy – that their reactions are filtered through these mindsets, and not only in Wen’s POV.
Is the premise a little thin? Sure, there are some pretty severe leaps in logic you have to jump through to entertain the world as it is in this novel. But that did not stop me from enjoying the merits of this novel. If you’ve seen the book, it hews pretty close to the novel, with the exception of the end – and while I appreciate some elements of the adaptation, I really prefer the ending of the novel. If you’ve seen both, what’s your preference?
