The House in the Pines: A Novel

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Ana Reyes’s debut is chilling, atmospheric, and addictive—a perfect thriller. I didn’t want it to end.” Still struggling to emerge from the wake of the tragedy she witnessed the summer before she left for college, Maya Edwards has built a life for herself with a nice guy named Dan and has vowed to stop using Klonopin to manage anxiety and insomnia. Then “Girl Dies on Camera” appears on social media. In it, a young woman pitches over dead at a table in a diner in Maya’s hometown of Pittsfield, Massachusetts. As Maya sees to her horror, the woman was with Frank Bellamy, an older man/weirdo she dated that terrible senior summer. Frank was present when her best friend, Aubrey West, died the same way as the woman in the video, with no cause ever determined. Maya’s always thought Frank had something to do with it. Now she's sure and takes a trip home to see what she can find out. As a thriller, Reyes’ debut is weak. The suspense is minimal, with no sense that Frank is coming for Maya or that it actually matters whether these crimes are solved. In fact, the main threat to Maya’s well-being is the difficulty of Klonopin withdrawal and the heavy drinking she is doing to get through it, endangering her relationship with Dan, and the most interesting storyline concerns Maya’s mother and father. Brenda Edwards met Jairo Ek Basurto while on a missionary trip in Guatemala; he was murdered at the age of 22 before Brenda even knew she was pregnant. He left behind an uncompleted manuscript which Maya translated around the time she met Frank but then stuffed in a drawer; it turns out to have inspiration for her now. One of the most interesting conversations in the novel is between Maya and her mother, discussing the manuscript and the idea that our souls have a “true home” elsewhere. One would rather read a book about Brenda and Maya and skip Frank and his house in the pines altogether. In what ways were the various representations of home (Maya’s hometown, her family’s home in Guatemala City, Frank’s cabin, and even Pixan’s fictional home in the mountains) significant? This story follows Maya. When Maya was a Senior in high school, her best friend Aubrey, died suddenly, mysteriously and with no identifiable cause, directly in front of Maya's eyes. The only other person around, a young man named Frank, fled the scene. Maya once saw this cabin as an idyllic place, like a cottage from a fairy tale, but now she knows the danger that lurks beneath.

I felt the book is really about the relationship between Maya and Frank (a creepy older librarian who tries to get Maya to abandon her plans for college and live with him) and how their relationship casts a dark shadow over her life in the present. That aspect of it reminded me quite a bit of My Dark Vanessa, another book about abuse and trauma. And this is what I think The House in the Pines is really about. The book’s narrative structure is also erratic at times. The House in the Pines jumped from present to past to present without any markers to orient the reader. I could have really used a heading for each chapter with the date.The central mystery (well, there are two, the first one is whether Frank actually killed those two women, and if so how, and) what is the deal with the strange house in the woods that haunts her dreams, the House in the Pines of the title. I’ve never read a mystery novel with a plot as intriguing and surprising as The House in the Pines. The novel’s characters were as fascinating as the situations they found themselves in. I couldn’t put it down.” If you were Maya, would you have confronted Frank in the bar? Do you think it was worth the risk to her own safety? Pliny the Elder said Home is where the heart is, but how can a place that feels so home-like also be so terrifying? This reflects some events and concerns in Reyes’s life. The inspiration was mostly subconscious. I was living alone in a new city, cut off from any place I’d call home, when I wrote the first draft. This lonely feeling inspired one of the book’s major themes, which is the universal yearning to return to a place and time of belonging. That theme shaped the story and helped me build the titular house in the pines. - from the Book Club Kit Reyes incorporated several elements of her life into the book. In addition to struggles with addiction, both Maya and Ana are half Guatemalan. Both were raised in Pittsfield, MA. The book took seven years to write, and the gap between Aubrey’s death and Maya’s return to the scene of the crime is seven years. Our unreliable narrator in this story is Maya. Maya has been addicted to Klonopin and alcohol for the past several years. Maya no longer has her Klonopin, and is experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Some of the withdrawal symptoms are paranoia, hallucination, and insomnia.

It's like she was forced to relive it. I appreciated that her character was willing to return home and face all her fears and it did get creepy.

The only part of the story I really didn’t get was the connection to the book that Maya’s father had been writing. This seems to be really symbolic, both in the synopsis and throughout the story itself, but I couldn’t make the connection between that story and what was happening to Maya. Exactly. That's definitely what I was going for, that dark side of nostalgia. - from the Salon interview Overall, this was fine as a debut. I can't say I was overly invested with the story or with how unreliable Maya was, but I'm not mad I read it. I wouldn't put this in the thriller category either, a psychological something, not sure what.

The House in the Pines is her debut novel, a book that came out of her MFA thesis. You’ll see my thoughts about the book in the review below. I am a former English major who does love a literary book, but I don’t think that literary writing and thrillers are always a good combination. Though I did just enjoy this literary thriller; go figure! And I discuss below (and in my Spoiler Review of The House in the Pines) that I think the book is (incorrectly, I think) being marketed as a thriller might explain its low Goodreads rating.Once Maya finally admits to Aubrey the truth behind her relationship with Frank, Aubrey surprises her. She's afraid of him too. Just as the two girls begin to make connections, on that very day, Aubrey ends up dead. The things I liked: the conjunction between past and present, Guatemalan heritage and mysterious book of Maya’s father, the folklore, the psychological foundation of the book.