Like much of the other information that I’ve managed to pick up in these six decades of wandering the planet, my knowledge of horror is self-taught. In truth, I’m an eclectic reader—my various, periodic obsessions generally stem from books I’m writing. For my unwinding time, however, horror stories seem to do the trick. Nobody I know in person reads horror, so my recommendations are generally the results of other books I read. That’s how I found Thomas Tryon’s The Other. Although I’d only learned of it recently, it has been a classic in the field for many decades. After having read it, I can see why. And unlike many fiction works with an afterword, this edition has one worth reading. Maybe you’re unfamiliar with the novel? If so, in brief, it’s about twins. It’s about twins.
Identical twins. Holland and Niles Perry were born over the cusp of midnight, giving them different birthdays while still being the same age. Unlike stereotypical identical twins, however, Holland is evil and Niles is good. As the novel unfolds it contains some twists that, if like me you haven’t heard the story, really do work. They live in a small town in Connecticut with their widowed mother, older sister and brother-in-law, maternal grandmother, and a couple of domestics. An aunt and uncle, along with a cousin, settle in. (It’s a large house.) Family dynamics are strange and the locals grow increasingly impatient with Holland’s antics. The Perry family is, however, long established and well respected.
Doesn’t sound very scary, does it? That’s the genius of the work. It’s a slow burn but when the fuse reaches the powder it leaves you trembling. Nobody taught me how to find and read horror. I’m still pretty much a novice and it seems that novels these days tend to have weight problems. I was glad to find The Other wasn’t excessively long. It shows that literary horror is possible as well. Like Shirley Jackson, Tryon received acclaim for his work. (And like Jackson, his novel doesn’t balloon out to over four hundred pages—something of a rarity these days.) I guess I’m just a bit surprised it took so long for me to find out about this one. I don’t want to give any spoilers because this is a beautifully constructed novel and knowing what happens might deter other readers. I wouldn’t want to do such a disservice to a book I wish I’d known about when I was younger.
