Nyctophobia

Nyctophobia is the best horror book I’ve read in 2014, and I doubt I’ll find a better book any time soon. The writing was exquisite, rich in detail, atmospheric and haunting. The book started out slow, and I expected to find a rather standard haunted house story, but this is completely different, and utterly, utterfly terrifying.

I had nightmares about this book last night, and I don’t think they’ll be the first. I don’t mind nightmares though, especially not when the cause is a book as amazing as this one.

In Nyctophobia, Callie has had a troubling childhood. Anorexia, trying to commit suicide, a controlling mother…When she meets Mateo, it feels like she’s finally getting her life back together. He’s a wine importer, originally from Spain, and years older than her. But to Callie it doesn’t matter – she’s in love, and Mateo is the best thing that ever happened to her. The two of them get married, and Mateo buys a grand old house in Southern Spain, named Hyperion House.

The house is strange, and an architectural miracle, which is great for Callie. She studied architecture, and wants to write a book about the house. The front part of the house is always bathing in light, and ideal place for a person with nyctophobia – fear for the dark. But the back part of the house, the servant’s quarter, are always in the dark, with a mountain looming over them.

As Callie and her family move into the house, she wants to investigate all the rooms, including the ones in the dark. However, the rooms are locked, the keys supposedly lost. The old housekeeper won’t share any secrets about the house, even though Callie feels she’s keeping quite a few. But then Callie starts hearing strange noises from the darkened rooms, shuffling, footsteps, furniture moving, whispers.

What is going on in her new house? How is it connected to the previous owners? Can she protect the people she loves?

I know it may sound cliché, but one it’s revealed what’s going on…well, I was shocked enough to nearly drop out of my chair, and then I was so terrified I had to glance behind my shoulder every now and then. There is no blood and gore, but the horror slowly creeps up on you, until it soaks into your skin and doesn’t let you go.

Amazing. Horrific. Terrifying. The best writing I’ve read in ages. Read it for yourself if you don’t believe me, but I can do nothing but recommend it.

This is the creepiest book I've read in a long, long time: Callie, a young architect with a so far troubled life, moves into a huge lonely house in the Spanish countryside with her husband Mateo and her stepdaughter Bonnie. The house is built so that the front lie always in the light and the back rooms, which are locked, lie always in the dark. With the family are living a housekeeper and a mute gardener. Mateo has to do a lot of travelling and thus Callie is often left alone with the other three. Callie is suffering from nyctophobia, fear of the dark, and is scared of the dark part of the house. When trying to find out about this dark side she meets many obstacles and is drawn ever deeper into the houses' dark secrets.
I like good creepy ghost stories which cause the horrors by ones deepiest fears and not so much by slaughtering others. Nyctophobia is a very scary book which makes you fear the dark and makes you question what's really behind those shadows. If you're fans of the more subtle horror this book might be just the thing for you.

Nyctophobia is defined as a significant fear of the dark. I'm not generally someone who is afraid of the dark, although I've been known to have my overtired darkness hallucinations from time to time. While I'm not really into scary books, this story in particular kind of feeds into the latent fears that I think we all thought we might have grown out of.

I also hadn't slept well in a week while reading this, and realized that (given I was reading this before bed every night), perhaps the warm glow of my Paperwhite was not enough to keep my mind firmly rooted in reality.

The tale is, in a way, a book about architecture. Callie marries and moves to Spain with her husband. Their home is an older building that is constructed in a certain way to allow light in at all times, but also has a closed-off servants quarters and is built to have some severely dark wings as well. The home also comes with a housekeeper and a gardener, both of which are as mysterious as the house itself. And then there are the weird things going on, the stuff in the dark behind the doors, and how protective of the dark side of the house the housekeeper tends to be.

The book is super creepy, and uses the concept of the fear of the dark in a pretty cool way. The reveals along the way are all pretty crazy, and it becomes almost a game of one-upsmanship along the way as the story speeds toward its end. The book does sputter a bit toward the end as it moves away from what made the rest of the narrative so scary in favor of a neat, but strange, explanation, but the fun of this book is more about the ride than the destination.

Overall, for a book that's generally outside of my genre preferences, I was very pleased and really enjoyed it in spite of the fact that it probably kept me up for a week. Might be a good gateway for this type of story for some, and I think those who are already happy to be a little scared when they read will find something to enjoy here.

I requested this novel on a hunch from Netgalley, thinking I didn't know the author, and it has been one of my best hunches to date. This book was on my mind from the moment I started reading it and had to put it down for work till now.

The novel couldn't work if Fowler didn't get the haunting aspects of the plot right and thankfully he does. One of my favourite movie genres is psychological thrillers, always thrillers over horrors. Blood scattered across walls and detached limbs gross me out and make me look away, but they don't scare me deep into my soul. In movies a lot can be done visually, of course, and in a novel all this happens in your mind, making the reading experience even more intense. If a thriller is well-written, it balances on the fine line between reality and fantasy that makes you doubt everything. And doubt, in my mind, is one of the strongest emotions humans feel and it is exactly the emotion that is triggered by the dark, because we don't know what's hiding in the corners. Nyctophobia is fear of the dark (nice segue, no?) and the whole novel is infused with the play between dark and light and reality and fantasy. It's also the only phobia that can be transmitted and this novel will most definitely make you reconsider sleeping in the dark.

Fowler's story gets a lot of its strength from its originality. I can hear you thinking 'haunted house, how is that original?' but Fowler brings some innovation to the old trope which largely comes from research. I have a pretty big love for architecture although I know nothing about it and I loved how much attention there was in Nyctophobia for the haunted house and its construction. At times the characterization is a bit sketchy but it is important to remember that a lot of the narrators in these kinds of books are unreliable narrators, in the sense that their own vision of events is skewed which adds to the mystery of the book. The first half of the book was very strong, clearly setting up the story and separating itself from many of the 'haunted house' cliches, but the third quarter wasn't quite as strong. However, the ending made up for any of the slack in the previous part and I was quite happy to both have some of my suspicions confirmed and to still have some surprises waiting for me.

On a quick side note, I was quite happy with the female main character. Callie has a troubled past which she has largely conquered but by which she is still haunted. She is educated and independent, but also desperate to please. Despite having problems with her mother she manages to be a good step-mother to her husband's daughter. What I am trying to get at is that Callie is quite a multi-dimensional character, she is not just a wife alone at home or just a mother trying to protect her kids, as we unfortunately often see in thrillers. Although I didn't agree with all the choices she made, I empathized with her and was happy about her as a character.

I thought I had never read anything by Fowler before until I saw a list of his previous books at the back of the book and saw he also wrote the Bryan & May series of which I reviewed one not too long ago. I never would have guessed these two books came from the some man. On the one hand, both are "mystical" if you want to be vague about it, but Nyctophobia is very different, not only in its female protagonists and non-British setting, but also in how it moves. Fowler's writing style is much more personal and on the one hand it feels like he takes his time with developing the story but on the other hand there is a quick pace to the book that heightens the tension.

I really enjoyed Nyctophobia, it is the best thriller I have read in ages and will read for a while. The main characters are really interesting and this is a take on the 'haunted house' trope that is truly refreshing and different. It hit all the right buttons and I will most definitely be rereading it soon. I recommend this not only to thriller fans but also to people looking for a story that is completely engrossing.

Nyctophobia is the new horror novel from author Christopher Fowler. Callie, an architect, recently got married to the man of her dreams, Mateo and together they moved to Spain. Callie and Mateo decided to split up and look at potential houses separately and then discuss them together later on in order to save time since Mateo travels a lot for business. After having a tour of the Hyperion House, Callie knows this is the place she wants to live.

The Hyperion House was built against a cliff face and was constructed in such a way as to maximize the amount of ambient light in almost every room of the house. Windows were put in at weird angles and there was a room specifically created for what everyone believes was a telescope.

After showing the house to Mateo, the two agree to purchase the house and move in right away. Things seem to be going well for Callie. She's in a loving relationship, she's far away from her insufferable mother, Anne, and she has a new project to keep her busy while waiting for Mateo's daughter to arrive in a few weeks; writing a story on the history of Hyperion House.

Soon after, things begin to change. Callie discovers rooms that are kept permanently locked within the house and the caretaker of the house for whatever reason, is incredibly reluctant to open them. She continuously tells Callie that they are meant to be that way and have been locked for years.

If only Callie would have listened to her, none of the terrible things that were to come would have happened.

An incredibly creepy and beautifully written story from this author. I'll definitely be looking into reading more of his work!

Hyperion House, standing high in the hills of Southern Spain, seems like an ideal home for Callie and Meteo, an architectural student and her wine importer husband. The grand old house has been designed to ensure that it is filled with light for as much time as possible, which is perfect for Callie, who suffers from nyctophobia (an extreme fear of the dark). It also comes complete with a mute gardener and a sinister housekeeper. Oh, and a section of the rear of the house that is locked, and appears to be permanently steeped in darkness…
I’ve been a fan of Chris Fowler’s work for many years. More recently he’s been writing the Bryant and May strange detective novels, of which I read the first few (and enjoyed them) but for some reason have lapsed (too many books, too little time!) but I’d like to pick them up again at some point.

I read Nyctophobia because it was a standalone novel, self contained and instantly accessible. The pacing of the book is great. Read the first paragraph and you’re hooked. By the time I had finished the first chapter I was expecting a fairly standard haunted house novel, but was entirely happy to journey on, as Fowler’s writing is so strong. However, as the story progressed I realised that there was so much more to the novel than a haunted house story. The half-light, half-dark aspect of the house is particularly fascinating. Fowler includes a couple of scenes where the characters venture into the ‘other realms’ of the house and the action is unbelievably creepy. The description of the souls that inhabit the dark side (originally the servants’ quarters) are horrific and nightmarish. And there’s a sequence involving a hornet’s nest that feels brutal and heart-breaking.

Nyctophobia is an unpretentious, fast-paced slice of horror. Whilst it’s difficult to say it reinvents the haunted house novel, it does at least attempt to try something different with the trope, and undoubtedly pulls it off. The Spanish location is evocative and interesting – Fowler clearly knows Spain and the Spanish ways – and there’s the perfect balance between scary scenes and Callie’s fascinating research into the mysterious history of Hyperion House. I really enjoyed reading this, and it has given me fresh impetus to return to the Bryant and May series. Fowler is a natural writer. You really feel you’re in good hands when reading one of his books. Definitely recommended.