THE FOURTH HOUSE

A new mother just released from a psychiatric institution is desperate to solve the mystery that haunts her in Barker’s novel.

Immediately after giving birth to her daughter, Rebecca, Sunny Johnson is committed to a psychiatric facility by her husband, Taylor, a psychiatrist himself. She’s diagnosed with peripartum psychosis, a condition that manifests itself in delusions, hallucinations, and irrational paranoia—and, in Sunny’s case, threats of violence against her husband. She’s dogged by memories, splintered impressions that don’t seem to correspond to any lived experience, and upon her release from the hospital she becomes obsessed with coming up with a rational explanation for them, a profound need poignantly captured by the author. In fact, Sunny teaches psychology at a university, and has a professional interest in the tendencies of the human psyche to embrace the irrational, as well as optimism about the power of rationality to liberate oneself from such fantasies. She flees with Rebecca in search of a home that she sees in her reveries and that she painted pictures of while in the hospital. That house turns out to be real, a former funeral parlor in Alexandria Bay in upstate New York with a gruesome past no one in town seems eager to discuss. When she stumbles upon the house from her dreams, she simply knows she’s been there and that, in an inexplicable way, she’s deeply connected to it. “That was why she was here; she was putting into practice what she preached—seeking out the facts required to explore alternate perspectives. Only then could one come to a rational explanation based on logic. But Sunny’s fears weren’t manifested in the manner most people might experience. Instead, they were from not knowing what these events were.” Barker deftly combines Sunny’s internal struggle with external drama, including Taylor’s frantic, police-assisted search for his wife and her likely recommitment to the hospital once she’s found.

At the heart of this suspenseful novel is an exploration of the challenge of certifying oneself as rational—Sunny is not a naïve woman, and she has no time for the supernatural, but she also feels a deep conviction that the strange images that impose themselves upon her are somehow connected to the real world. Occasionally, Barker indulges some cliched literary strategies. The appearance of a mysterious fortuneteller, Madame Vanderhill, who speaks in cryptic riddles, makes the tale temporarily feel like the rehashing of an old paperback formula (she’s the one character in the book who seems like a stock type, a prefabricated template). At times, Barker strains to build dramatic tension; it is simply not necessary for this refrain to appear so often: “I’ve been here…before.” Each instance seems like an anxious reminder that this is a creepy story, a note delivered to readers in whom Barker has limited confidence. Still, the novel as a whole is impressively well crafted and, in fact, genuinely creepy—and unpredictable, to boot.

Despite some literary missteps, an artfully unsettling tale of the contest between reason and madness.