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How to review this odd little horror novel. To begin with positives, I'd describe some scenes and descriptions of the entity known as Other Mommy as distressing and even frightening (many reviews rightly allude to a bathroom scene that tipped from unnerving to downright disturbing). The voice of Bela is reasonably immersive and well rendered by Malerman, although I found myself wanting to go beyond the surface level of her descriptions. Eight-year-olds are usually more rounded than this, and her fairly robotic narration, while providing the novel with its own unique feel, rarely gave me the sense of a real person struggling with real trauma.

I say rarely, yet occasionally it did. And this leads me to another aspect that I thought was handled well: the subtext. At its heart, this novel is "really" about a little girl's terror of her family fracturing along seams that are all too apparent early in the story. As horrifying as Other Mommy often is, her terrible insidious persistence, the sorrow of a child powerless to help her parents contain the reactor core meltdown of their own secrets is why I kept reading past some of the clunkier parts (endlessly repetitive sleeping arrangements, over-elaborate speeches) and the odd formatting and strange linguistic affectations (I'd genuinely love a conversation with the author in case I've missed some rationale and the problem lies with me).

A partially successful horror tale, then. Overall I liked it fine. I've read so much horror that I know I can be tough to please, and I've stated more than once my opinion that horror as a genre is difficult to sustain over the length of a novel, even by the acknowledged masters, so once again I'm wondering how much more successful Incidents Around the House might have been as a tighter novella.

If we could grade more finely than Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ allows, I'd say it's a solid 3.5.