Behind the Door

I loved this book on every level.

4.5 Cranky Stars

What if you could forget the worst memory you have? Or get rid of a vice or habit that you can’t seem to kick? Or make a person disappear from your life? Would you? Should you?

The people of Zarephath, Pennsylvania, have found a way to do these things and so much more. In the woods around their small town, there is a mysterious Door that supposedly has the power to change things in your life. All you have to do is write down your desire in a letter and slip it under The Door at night and your wish will be granted. Or, so they say.

The only thing is that you can only do this one time in your life, you must be very careful in the way you word your request, and you must never, never, NEVER open The Door!

Many of the town’s residents have taken advantage of The Door and most think that the requests they made are forever. However, for some reason, the desires that have been granted seem to be coming back to haunt those who made the requests.

Some of my favorite quotes:

“When you ask for things that defy the laws of God and nature, it never, never works out.”

“We weren’t ever meant to have things like the Door in our world. It ain’t something human beings should ever have had to live with. Too much temptation and too much of stuff far beyond most folks’ comprehension.”

“There are as many kinds of sins as there are sinners. I don’t think I’m in any position to judge what other people deserve.”

The book was well written and I especially enjoyed the way that the characters were introduced and developed throughout the book. The story was reminiscent of Stephen King’s “Pet Semetary” and the horror story “The Monkey’s Paw”. The whole book was filled with a haunting tension that kept me reading until I was finished.

The story reminded me that everybody has secrets. Some are just more horrible than others! Moral of the story: Be careful what you wish for…..you just might get your wish granted!

The Biblical meaning of the name Zarephath is “ambush of the mouth.” Appropriate, given that much of the horror in Mary SanGiovanni’s Behind the Door is rooted in unspoken secrets.

Deep in the woods of Zarephath, PA stands a mysterious structure, the Door, framed in stone, its wood banded in metal. It opens to an alien landscape of a gray ocean and a enormous tower, a land populated by strange and evil creatures. Opening the Door is verboten – it is the one thing every man, woman, and child in Zarephath knows. You do not open the Door.

The Door, however, can grant wishes to those who dare to visit it. Properly worded, a letter detailing an individual’s wants can be slipped through the thin crack at the bottom edge of the Door and their desires fulfilled within three days. But the urge to open the Door is strong, and after a single soul seeking a change in their life succumbs to pleas of “them beyond” the Door and briefly opens it, Zarephath is plunged into a nightmare. The wishes the Door has granted are being reversed, and after being haunted by the dead of his past, ex-Sheriff Bill Grainger calls on occultist Kathy Ryan to seal the Door forever.

Right off the bat, I was sucked into Behind the Door. SanGiovanni details the history and folklore of the Door, introducing us to the central figures of her small fictional town. We get an immediate sense of her characters, their afflictions, their flaws, as well as their relationships and their growing awareness of the Door and the evils that have crept through. This intimate overview of Zarephath and our protagonists reminded me, in some ways, of John Connolly and Stephen King, and SanGiovanni lulled me deeply into her narrative with deceptive, masterful ease. Her prose is crisp and tight, and the details are shared with such keen interest that it’s impossible not to be absorbed.

Although it takes a while for series lead Kathy Ryan (first seen in 2016’s Chills and very briefly mentioned in last year’s Savage Woods) to appear, SanGiovanni at least gives us plenty of meat in other areas to chew on. Once Ryan finally sets foot in Zarephath, it’s a headlong collision with Lovecraftian cosmic horrors and a race to the finish. SanGiovanni is flat-out an excellent Lovecraftian horror author, and she brings all the tentacled goods to the yard here. There’s a particularly strong scene involving the discovery of a pair of corpses in a garage that, when Ryan prompts one of officers to turn over one of the prone bodies, had me softly muttering to my Kindle, “No, no, no, no, no.” It’s a wonderful bit of gross-out material, and the toll the Door begins to take on the townsfolk is a nicely horrifying discovery.

Ryan is a flat-out excellent series character, and I’ve been rooting for her return ever since I finished Chills a couple years back. She’s a strong and capable master of the occult, and it’s refreshing to see SanGiovanni’s largely male cast treat her with the respect she’s due. Perhaps it’s wishful thinking to believe that a group of alpha male police officers and butch townies can treat a woman, even one with such specialized talents as Ryan’s, as an equal whose abilities go unquestioned with nary a trace of mansplaining. But given that our Cheeto-In-Chief was, on the morning of this writing, taking to Twitter to call one of his former female staffers a dog, I’ll gladly take it. Such an idealized portrayal of men easily and respectfully accepting the abilities and knowledge of women as equal, if not superior, to their own is not only welcome, but certainly necessary in these times. Maybe such a fair and balanced representation of the sexes is SanGiovanni’s attempt to write her wishes into existence in the hopes that the Door can fulfill them. Or maybe it’s just nice to read more into the text than was intended. If I can wish for something from this particular Door, however, it’s for the return of Kathy Ryan, and soon. She’s a character with plenty of staying power, and I hope to be reading many more volumes of her adventures in the years to come.

I loved this book. Read it twice

A sort of sci fi – horror- lovecraftian (which is a thing I hate since tentacles are way older than lovecraft) story. Some characters go down badly, and some redeem themselves. I liked it.

Behind the Door, by Mary SanGionvanni, is a tale that hearkens back to the archetypal theme posed in stories such as The Monkey’s Paw.

Be careful what you wish for.

In the forest near the town of Zarephath, there stands a mysterious door. It is an unassuming, aged wooden door that does not appear to lead anywhere. However, this door turns out to be a magical portal to an unknowable dimension. For generations, citizens of Zarephath would walk alone into the woods at night to slip a letter under the door. The letters would contain heartfelt requests that are fulfilled in three days. Each person is allotted only one wish. Some wish for understandable favors such as an end to illness, pain, sadness, or addiction. On the other hand, some ask that their heartless sins and vile crimes will remain hidden, thus protecting them from retribution. What could go possibly wrong?

SanGionvanni’s writing style is a strong point. Her prose is easy to read, clear, and intelligent. It does include a heavy dose of tell, but this can be said to fit nature of this genre.

Characterization is arguably the strongest element in the tale. The players are varied, real, flawed, multidimensional, and clearly drawn. Some elicit pity; some elicit visceral disgust. Almost all of them have crept into the forest to slip letters under the door. Readers will have no problem finding characters to root for and characters to hate. Some may even wish their town had its own door in the forest.

The plot kicks into motion when a mother who has lost a child wishes to forget the pain of her loss. She carefully writes and delivers her own letter. In three days, the pain is forgotten, but so are the love and good memories. She soon realizes her mistake and is overcome with regret. How will she deal? An intelligent aspect of the plot is the fact that the characters’ lives and letters turn out to be intrinsically intertwined by hidden connections. These connections ultimately increase tension and keep readers guessing what will happen if or when the truth is revealed. When the inevitable complications occur, the outcome is deadly . Occult specialist Kathy Ryan is called in to save the town.

By the time Ryan arrives, the entire town is at war with supernatural entities. At first the entities are recognizable, believable, fearful, and even strangely worthy of pity. Soon, they morph into quasi Lovecraftian creatures that loose their individuality and thus become less interesting. In addition, Ryan lacks complexity and would be a much more believable and interesting character if she offered information more rooted in any actual magical tradition. That lack of complexity extends to and effects the conclusion which ends up as rather lack-luster and too easily accomplished

Overall, the author does a great job of creating a complex, surprisingly believable story. It will be easy for readers to suspend disbelief and buy into the possibility of a magic door.

Although Behind the Door is a part of the Kathy Ryan series, it can be understood and enjoyed by those who have not read any of the other Kathy Ryan novels. Followers of the series will no doubt enjoy this tale, and newbies will most likely dive into the rest of the collection after reading this edition to the series.

I this book requires a trigger warning. It is at the bottom of the review. If you don’t need trigger warnings and hate all spoilers, only read the next two paragraphs, or read somebody else’s review.

It’s a rich storytelling premise — in the woods near a small town is a mysterious wooden door, free-standing, with rune-carved stones beneath it and a minimal frame around it. If, at night, a person slips a letter, sealed with blood, between the door and the frame, the letter won’t appear in the woods on the other side of the door. And whatever the writer asked to have taken away — bad memories, an abusive spouse, the tragic results of a moment’s inattention on the road — will disappear with three days. Though often that disappearance will take an unwelcome form, so word that letter carefully. And never, ever open the Door.

So, of course, someone words a letter poorly, there’s a truly terrible consequence, and the Door is opened. And all the things Taken Away come back. Honestly, this alone could have made an amazing novel — the kind of interest accumulated on all these reckonings, the impact on the moral character of a town where any one really bad act can be gotten away with — and the author plays a little with this, offering some amazingly dark and surreal images of returned things. But the focus quickly turns to an incursion of monsters, and honestly, that really lost the sense of dark wonder for me as a reader.

Spoiler and trigger warning:

There are references to child sexual abuse, child suicide, and one of the narrators is a pedophile, who has engaged in what many would consider unforgivable acts. He gets a redemption arc. I feel strongly that readers need the option to know this before ever picking up this book.