The Valley of Vengeful Ghosts

Review

Featuring one of the least-relatable, most annoying protagonists of a book that I’ve read in recent memory! The story follows a therapist in the wake of her mother’s death by, more or less, assisted suicide in her terminal illness. I do not understand the title, because there are not a lot of ghosts (maybe two) and none of them are at any point vengeful. Basically, the woman buys a model house and it is full of problems. Also, she starts to hallucinate her dead mother. (Mild spoilers below.)

I really worried, for the first 20–50 pages, that it read like Shirley Jackson Karaoke. While that feeling didn’t go away, the story does read well enough that it didn’t feel like a labor and everything felt Okay Enough. I liked it in the sense that it read well and there were parts I liked. I detest our protagonist, who is perhaps the most useless, least relatable, most self-pitying protagonist I’ve ever read. She takes no self-motivated action throughout the first 200 pages of the book, only on the edge of apparent death does she take minimal lifesaving behavior. My inner social worker is rather offended at how bad she seems to be at her job as a therapist, and how little care or effort she puts into it. Yes! She is in grief and dealing with that (very poorly), but wow!

There are a few scenes that I can’t wait to see how my book club reacted to. Everything with Antoni, really. Horrible, but relatable, decision to text someone that doesn’t give a shit about you while you’re feeling like crap. Who hasn’t done it?

This is okay. I’d probably recommend it to people looking for a fast semi-spooky read. It isn’t one I’ll pick up again, though.

Notes

• p17 - E, it’s been ages! Did you know they’re demolishing our old building? I just passed by and thought of you. Drink tonight to mourn?
  • TB: My margin note: Oh boy. This man hasn’t talked to our protagonist in years and reaches out for drinks that night? Is this normal behavior? Surely not!
• p39 - Eleanor had assumed her backdrop was as indistinct and abstracted to Kristy as Kristy’s was to her. “I’m sorry I made you feel unheard. And yes, I moved recently.” After a pause, she added, “I bought a house.”
  • TB: inner social worker voice screaming, Shut up!
• p48 - Eleanor listened to each discrete, percussive snap of the clippers, only dully aware of the pressure or pain of a bent nail. She felt a soothing, mindless distance from her own feet, from her whole body. She wished to abdicate her ownership of it, her responsibility for it, give it over to Lele’s care.
  • TB: Sets the stage early for a totally dependent protagonist that is painfully unable to do anything for themselves.
• p61 - The cruelest thing Antony had ever said, at the end of their relationship: “I used to feel sorry for you. I thought she was smothering you, stunting you. But now I feel sorry for her. She’s a fucking saint.”
• p77 - “And it feels almost unfair that my feed is so different, and she gets to be so oblivious, so heartless. Every morning, I wake up and see children being slaughtered. Dictators getting elected, rights stripped away, workers mistreated, missiles fired. In a sick way, I almost miss the early days of the pandemic.”
  • TB: I rather like this paragraph as a little critique of the algorithms.
• p152 - Thinking of you, she wrote.
  • TB: Oh yes, great idea. Who among us hasn’t felt like shit and decided to make it worse by messaging someone we know doesn’t give a shit about us?
• p156 - “I want to practice talking to females.”
  • TB: I took a picture of these two pages and sent them to a server of social workers. This protagonist is not a good therapist, but I thought this was pretty good.
• p161 - Like everyone else, she was doomed to dream the dreams of the man who built her house, then men who ruled the world.
  • TB: Not to be a Guy, but this got a huge eyeroll out of me. It comes way out of nowhere in the book and I don’t get why, what is she talking about? It feels like there are several plot threads that don’t exactly start and don’t exactly finish or go anywhere, and this line feels like a remnant. This woman takes literally no action on ANYTHING throughout the entire book, until literally four pages, and somehow her inner monologue always makes her out to be a victim or a child.