FINAL BOY

This is a horror novel set in modern New York. Married couple Reid and Ana have just had a baby, Charlie, and the birth was traumatic and Ana is in a wheelchair undergoing physical therapy which isn’t going so well. Their luck seems to turn as they had put their names into the Lottery for a flat at the illustrious Deptford building – one of the most sought after addresses in New York and the novel opens with them being shown around the incredible flat. The Deptford houses novelists, faded movie stars, rock stars, artists and they hold a Lottery to throw open the chance for ordinary people to come and live there too.

Of course, there’s a catch, but just as Reid and Ana don’t know what it is, we don’t either. Slowly, inexorably, the unusual aspects of the building start to unfold. The cover blurb describes it as ‘harnessing the creeping paranoia of Rosemary’s Baby with the urban horror of Salem’s Lot, and that’s a decent jumping off point, though it is very much its own thing.

The horror in this book is very much of the strange scratching noises at the windows of the 18h floor, weird angles and shadows glimpsed out of the corner of your eye, a lift operator who is not quite right variety rather than jump scares. Honestly, it has been the most unnerving and frightening of the books that I’ve reviewed so far – even more than the final third of Brother – it really taps into some visceral and uncomfortable sensations and more than once I felt ‘I ought to just get up and make SURE that front door really is locked’

Something I really like is that although Ana is grappling with a new baby, post-natal depression and disabilty, Nat Cassidy is not afraid to make her unsympathetic in sections of the book – she isn’t early on a heroine that you’re rooting for – in fact, she’s largely an asshole, and I think its really great to see someone in this situation who doesn’t have to be painted as a saint. Likewise, my feelings on Reid really changed during the book and his character develops in ways that surprised me but also the seeds had been planted early on and though his character changes he doesn’t ever act out of character.

There are also really interesting sections about the Jewish faith and what it means both for our leads and challenging some of our assumptions about how embedded things like Christianity are into our myths about vampires (the holy water, the cross etc) and this is a take I haven’t seen before.

My only quibble with this book, and it’s a very small one, is that the UK release seems to be taking forever, so I had to get an American edition because I just couldn’t wait and wanted to read it. It’s compelling right from the off, you want to know what happens to these people, you want to know about the Deptford and it’s very difficult to stop reading at the end of a chapter and call it a night. You can really feel here, as with all of the best horror, how much Nat Cassidy has drawn from his real life experiences to enrich these characters and moments.