The Dead of the House - Classic American Gothic Novel | Family Saga & Literary Fiction | Perfect for Book Clubs & Gothic Literature Lovers

I learned of this book from an old article in Cincinnati Magazine from 1979 describing numerous “Summer Places” where Cincinnatians stay in cottage communities during the warmer months. A few of them were in Michigan, including Neahtawantah on the West Bay of Grand Traverse Bay. I had been looking for information about places like Neahtawantah and Northport Point and according to the article, "Hannah Green, The New Yorker writer and former Glendalian, immortalized Neahtawanta in her novel, The Dead of the House,” so I decided to read it.The novel is a nostalgic and genealogical tale of the narrator's family and upbringing which mostly takes place in Cincinnati where much of her big, multi-generational family lives. The early sections of the book deal extensively with her ancestors including their lives in Europe before coming to America and Canada and there are many relations to keep track of which can be a struggle. But the section also brings out some of the themes of the novel like pioneers versus businessmen and woodsmen versus readers.That’s where Neahtawantah comes up. It’s a summer resort where the narrator, Vanessa, and her sister, Lisa, grow up swimming and sailing in Bower’s Harbor and socializing with other families from Cincinnati that also spend the summer there. And it’s a counterpoint to her life in Ohio where she “used to wait miserably through the winter to be back in Michigan, running through the woods, running up the beach again into the wind.” There are many scenes captured from her family’s trips out of the city and up north for the summer from the all day drive from Ohio to Northern Michigan, to a deep crush she has on a boy, Dirk, who also goes to “Neah” for the summers.After I slogged through the genealogical passages of the novel I thought I wasn’t going to like it but the book later takes on some more conventional story lines involving some secrets in the family, some compromises, and some unexpected joys, and while mortality hangs over quite a bit of it there are many scenes of Midwestern life that knit together a complete picture of this sprawling family with a history going back several generations in Ohio, Michigan, and Canada. I realized that the genealogy helps to build and support the ideas, experiences, and characters of the narrator and her family and these early passages are as essential to the final effect of the novel as any other section is. The recounting of family stories both from the narrator’s perspective and from her family members’ is the main narrative technique here and the many tales and the many characters all help to make up an unforgettable tapestry.