The House of Dust by Noah Broyles
Publication Date: September 28, 2021
The House of Dust by Noah Broyles is an amazingly brilliant,
original psychological thriller/horror story. The novel follows a non-linear
timeline reverting and forth between the past and current times through the
narrator, Brad. I, personally, got a little lost in the back and forth until
about halfway through the book and at that point all the stories began to fall
into place and the characters and the times in which they lived all started to
fall into place and make sense. I struggled in the beginning, thinking, "I
am having such a hard time understanding what is going on, I can't follow
this". In all honesty I wanted to put the book down, but the story pulled
me in so hard that I had to stick with it to find out what exactly was going
on.
The beginning of the novel starts off by telling you that Brad, the
narrator, is dead and this is his last literary piece. He is a true crimes
writer for a popular magazine called Southern Gothic. The first few
chapters you find out that Brad is having a huge mental breakdown. A lot is
being stacked on top of him all at the same time, more even than he thinks he
can bare. He is travelling through the south trying to get inspiration for his
next true crime article when he stumbles upon an eerie rural town in the middle
of nowhere Tennessee named Adamah. At this point, the reader is drawn into a
rabbit hole that twist and turns and becomes so tangled that you begin to
question if you are still reading the same book or if it got tangled with
another book during printing (it gets that wild).
I didn't grasp what was going on until middle way through the novel, as I've
stated. I urge you, the reader, to keep reading even though you may be
confused. This confusion is an amazing literary tool that Noah Broyles has used
to suck you into the vortex that is The House of Dust. Noah has
created an amazing way to help the reader mentally feel the confusion and
desperation the characters within the novel feel. I have only ever read one
other novel that was this immersive to me and that was House of Leaves by
Mark Z Danielewsky. Both novels create an immersive vortex that suck the reader
in, and you just cannot stop reading because of how out of control the
characters and the story become.
I am so glad I stuck with this story and didn't give up because it brings up
the subject of mental illness and how important it is for every human being, no
matter of age, to be able to communicate and express how they are feeling to
others. All the characters within The House of Dust lived
through some type of trauma and they never dealt with it. This causes
confusion, anger, depression, and all kinds of feelings that the characters
have a hard time communicating and, in the end, they end up lashing out because
of it. Mental illness is a serious condition that must be dealt with. A person
cannot let "the dust settle" on a past trauma because the trauma will
still be there waiting for someone or something to "blow that dust"
back off and that trauma resurfaces over and over again. I am so thankful to
Noah Broyles sharing this story and bringing to light the danger of not being
able to communicate and express your feelings and the aftermath of letting
"the dust settle" on your problems.
Thanks to Netgalley and Inkshares publishing for an advanced copy for an honest review.
For Purchase: The House of Dust
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