“The Devil’s House” by John Darnielle, Seasonal Satan – Libération

The novel is a feverish tale by the American musician, around a murder perpetrated in the 1980s by a group of idle teenagers in a former sex shop.

“Let us celebrate together the mystery of faith.” John Darnielle has not set foot in a church for decades, but this injunction from the Roman missal illuminates all of his work – and even more particularly the Devil's Housethird novel released this fall by Le Gospel. Fascinating pileup of stories revolving around Gage Chandler, author of “true crime” best-sellers with radical methods (he moved to the house where the crime took place for several months to immerse himself in it) and his new subject of work: a murder perpetrated in the 1980s in California, in the midst of the “satanic panic”, by a group of idle teenagers in a former sex shop. To this central plot, will be grafted, in an exponential panic, like spots of humidity contaminating an immaculate facade, extracts from Chandler's previous book, a letter, a portrait, memories and even a song of gestures written in the purest medieval style – the only moment in this ungovernable hodgepodge which seems at first glance forced, superfluous, but in truth contains all the heart and soul of the Devil's Housea tribute claimed to Canterbury Counts of Chaucer, tense entirely by this indestructible obsession with the “mystery of faith”, this need to abandon oneself entirely to a narrator, however faulty he may be.

Narrative layers superimposed with maniacal care

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