The Elementals

"This book’s haunted house is a holiday home on Alabama’s Gulf Coast. It’s less thunderstorms and flickering lights (although there are some of those) and more sweltering heat and ominous piles of sand. “Horror is the perfect playground to work through all sorts of political, social, and personal ‘issues.’ It’s a breeding ground for metaphor” Following the death of the matriarch, and a rather bizarre funeral, the Savage and McCray families take some time to visit their summer homes. The homes sit on either side of a vacant house buried in sand. Of course, the house isn’t entirely vacant, and the youngest family member can’t help herself from awakening the forces within… There’s something so compelling about the combined high drama of social expectations and traditional horror imagery. I love these very ‘proper’ characters. These are polite people, wealthy people, they organise fundraisers for charities and political campaigns. Bad things aren’t supposed to happen to them. It’s entertaining to see how these people who are so ill-prepared for anything out-of-the-ordinary will adapt, and what they will reveal about their true characters."