Gentrification and Ghosts: A Review of The Agony House

The Agony House (2018)
Written by: Cherie Priest
Illustrated by: Tara O’Connor
Genre: YA Horror
Pages: 256 (Hardcover)
Publisher: Scholastic

Why I Chose It: It was suggested to me, either by BookBub or by my Amazon Kindle Daily Deals email. I can’t recall which. I do know that when Cherie Priest’s books cross my line of sight, I always stop to see what they’re about and if I want to read this one. This one looked fun as heck — a young adult haunted house story with illustrations? The kindle “look inside” feature didn’t really give me an idea of what the illustrations were, so I reached out to my lovely local public library who had this book on the shelves! So of course, I checked it out. Especially since I’ve been on a YA binge of late.

The Premise:

Denise Farber has just moved back to New Orleans with her mom and step-dad. They left years ago after Hurricane Katrina and are back now, wagering the last of their family’s money on fixing up an old, run-down house and converting it to a bed and breakfast.

When the unexplained noises start, that seems a little weird. Same too for the fact that nothing seems to work around the house…even when it should. But when floors start collapsing suddenly and deadly objects fall everywhere–and voices start speaking to Denise–she knows that something more sinister lies hidden.

Could the answers lie in an old comic book that Denise finds in the abandoned attic…the lost last work of a famous artist who apparently lived here? Denise isn’t going anywhere, so she must unravel the mystery, on the pages and off them, if she and her family are to survive…

Spoilers yes or no? Assume yes. It’s always hard to talk about a young adult book for an adult reader because things that might be twists to a younger audience are pretty clearly telegraphed for an adult. So though I am going to talk around the major plot points, it still might spoil things for adult readers.

Discussion: I have had mixed luck with Priest’s books in the past. I always love her characters and her settings but sometimes find her plots too stripped down for satisfaction.

That said, The Agony House was just really a win for me. In this case, the stripped down plot really just worked well. This is listed as YA, but it’s a young YA and I’d personally feel comfortable handing this book to any middle grade reader.

Things I loved about this book from the basic to the more complex:

The illustrations: Up above I mentioned that I didn’t know what form the illustrations were going to take. There were chapter header images, but was that enough to really call it illustrated? What O’Connor brings to the table is a comic book within the pages of the book. Denise finds a comic book, carefully hidden in the creepy attic, and begins to read it. And as she does, we get to read along in the comic book that O’Connor has drawn. It’s very fun. I really enjoyed O’Connor’s comic art — it was very dynamic and good at conveying character.

Priest does a really nifty job of giving the reader reasons for Denise only reading the comic a few pages at a time. The comic itself — doesn’t make a lot of sense as a comic book? But as the comic book writer’s final missive from the dead, it works perfectly. Just don’t think too hard about when it was drawn, or hidden, or the like.

The characters: Denise is great. She treads the line between resentful teen and responsible daughter really well. It’s utterly understandable that she resents the house and the move from Houston to New Orleans just before her senior year of high school. I’d have been pissed too. But while she complains, she also genuinely understands that this is a good chance at a new, better life for her mother and her stepfather. She’s kind of determined that she won’t like New Orleans, but when opportunity arises for her to make friends, she doesn’t cut off her nose to spite her face. She adapts. She makes friends and frenemies.

The setting: In some ways, the setting is as stripped down as the plot. Denise wanders between a few places — the old house, the local hangout restaurant for the kids, a few others. It’s New Orleans, but what we get of the outside world is pretty much limited to being unpleasantly hot. So it’s very bare bones. You’re not going to feel like you’re THERE.

Except… Priest does an amazing job of exploring some of post-Katrina realities — from lost family members, to the scattering of survivors, to the general poverty of a community still trying to get out from under the destruction, and to the social issues that linger. Denise’s parents are seen with extreme caution. Sure, they’re coming to restore an old house (on a government grant) but does that make them gentrifiers or genuine members of the community? She not only illuminates that constant struggle between community improvement that somehow manages to exclude the residents living there, but provides tangible solutions to help combat the problem. (Hire Local, the answer is always to Hire Local.)

And then of course, there’s the ghost story. Denise’s house is haunted by two ghosts — a woman with rose perfume, and a dark, scary man who likes to mess about with nails and injure the Farbers. While the mystery of the ghosts is fairly simple, it is laid out really well. Denise and her quasi-friend Terry, the local ghost hunter who brazenly makes himself at home in the Argonne House, have a nice line of clues to follow. They know that Joseph Vaughn, a comic book writer, died in the house (although it’s not his house). But they don’t know who the woman ghost is, and they don’t know why Vaughn is so angry. There are red herrings and facts that they think they know and facts that get turned inside out, and a few mildly scary moments. I found the resolution really satisfying even though I predicted the “Big Reveal” earlier. It’s one of those reveals that’s just as satisfying to anticipate as it is to be surprised by it.

Overall, The Agony House is just a really solid, fun YA ghost story. I checked it out from the library, but I will be buying it for my personal collection. I could see it being a very fun reread, or even just a book to have around so that you can pass it to a younger reader.