Book Review - The Other by Thomas Tryon
Title:The Other
Author: Thomas Tryon
Publication Date: 1971
Genre: Horror
Pages: 258 pages
Rating: 4/5 stars
Buy It Now: https://amzn.to/2NYlsnd
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Goodreads Blurb:
Holland and Niles Perry are identical thirteen-year-old twins. They are close, close enough, almost, to read each other’s thoughts, but they couldn’t be more different. Holland is bold and mischievous, a bad influence, while Niles is kind and eager to please, the sort of boy who makes parents proud. The Perrys live in the bucolic New England town their family settled centuries ago, and as it happens, the extended clan has gathered at its ancestral farm this summer to mourn the death of the twins’ father in a most unfortunate accident. Mrs. Perry still hasn’t recovered from the shock of her husband’s gruesome end and stays sequestered in her room, leaving her sons to roam free. As the summer goes on, though, and Holland’s pranks become increasingly sinister, Niles finds he can no longer make excuses for his brother’s actions.
My Thoughts:
This is a truly insidious novel. It starts off so slowly as to almost be dull, but by the time it was done I was practically crawling in my skin from just how uncomfortable this novel left me.
The novel starts off as a fairly standard, fairly bland good twin vs evil twin story. Niles is practically angelic, loved by all his family and everyone in the small New England town where they live. Holland, on the other hand, is malevolent from the very beginning, poisoning his cousin's rat and hanging his grandmother's cat within the first few pages of the novel. As the novel move on, the evil acts pile up ever faster.
Honestly, for the first 2/3 of the book, I didn't think I was really going to enjoy it. It was very much a slow burn, with the last act ramping up quickly and (so I thought at the time) predictably. But once I finished the novel and had a minute to think about it, I was caught off guard by just how deeply it had gotten under my skin. I felt like a frog being boiled; until I took a step back, I didn't notice just how completely and utterly terrified this book left me.
This book is a horror classic, and for good reason. It's an excellent example of how horror doesn't need to be all about gore and jump scares, ghosts and demons. Sometimes people are terrifying enough as it is.
Goodreads Blurb:
Holland and Niles Perry are identical thirteen-year-old twins. They are close, close enough, almost, to read each other’s thoughts, but they couldn’t be more different. Holland is bold and mischievous, a bad influence, while Niles is kind and eager to please, the sort of boy who makes parents proud. The Perrys live in the bucolic New England town their family settled centuries ago, and as it happens, the extended clan has gathered at its ancestral farm this summer to mourn the death of the twins’ father in a most unfortunate accident. Mrs. Perry still hasn’t recovered from the shock of her husband’s gruesome end and stays sequestered in her room, leaving her sons to roam free. As the summer goes on, though, and Holland’s pranks become increasingly sinister, Niles finds he can no longer make excuses for his brother’s actions.
My Thoughts:
This is a truly insidious novel. It starts off so slowly as to almost be dull, but by the time it was done I was practically crawling in my skin from just how uncomfortable this novel left me.
The novel starts off as a fairly standard, fairly bland good twin vs evil twin story. Niles is practically angelic, loved by all his family and everyone in the small New England town where they live. Holland, on the other hand, is malevolent from the very beginning, poisoning his cousin's rat and hanging his grandmother's cat within the first few pages of the novel. As the novel move on, the evil acts pile up ever faster.
Honestly, for the first 2/3 of the book, I didn't think I was really going to enjoy it. It was very much a slow burn, with the last act ramping up quickly and (so I thought at the time) predictably. But once I finished the novel and had a minute to think about it, I was caught off guard by just how deeply it had gotten under my skin. I felt like a frog being boiled; until I took a step back, I didn't notice just how completely and utterly terrified this book left me.
This book is a horror classic, and for good reason. It's an excellent example of how horror doesn't need to be all about gore and jump scares, ghosts and demons. Sometimes people are terrifying enough as it is.
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