Review: The Cabin at the End of the World
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5 stars. WOW. I don’t even know where to begin. I loved Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts but felt really meh about Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, so I had no idea what to expect going into this. And honestly, until the end, I was on the fence. I really don’t take to Tremblay’s attempts to write children, and I fully expected to hate what looked to be a very bleak ending. But then I reached the last page and … felt the whammy of a gut punch so big I nearly burst into tears.
I guess we should back up. The Cabin at the End of the World opens with Eric and Andrew and their 7-year-old adopted daughter Wen on vacation in an isolated cabin with … you guessed it … no cell service. While Wen catches grasshoppers in the front yard, she’s approached by a huge and friendly man named Leonard, who engages her in weird conversation until three others show up - carrying terrifying hybrid weapons and wearing similar outfits in different colors.
Leonard and his companions are a threat, but not the type of threat you’d assume, and this sort of apocalyptic home invasion story runs a very tension-filled course. What follows is a nightmare - a nightmare that never ends and only gets worse. Wen and her fathers are good, good people who experience incredibly awful things. It’s pretty hard to recap, actually, but just know that this is a scary read. A traumatic and interesting and well-written read.
I loved that Tremblay offers us many clues - throws explanations our way, in fact - and yet leaves things ambiguous at the end. We have answers, but we don’t know what to believe. And it’s a tremendous exploration of what happens when we are backed into a corner - when our worst fears for our loved ones and ourselves unfold right in front of our eyes. You will feel like you are there. You will feel in it. You will experience the horror and the loss and the pain.
And yet it’s so captivating. I couldn’t put it down. Even when my eyes were blurry with exhaustion, my head hurt, my knee ached with sympathy pain, even when I was convinced I knew what to expect and had to muscle through it to be sure, I couldn’t put it down. Tremblay still can’t shake the almost hilarious analogies ("Leonard falls off his knees and returns to all fours, a reversal of the evolutionary ascent-of-humans pictograph..." or "Leonard is battered, a diminished and broken King Kong after the swan dive off the Empire State Building. Sabrina is pressed against the wall as though standing on the crumbling ledge of a cliff face.") but his writing here is deeply emotional. He plays it all just right.
And that ending. Fuck, it really worked for me. I thought I had it figured out - thought I knew what was going to happen. Nope, I was thrown for a wonderful loop. A wonderful loop. It felt like Horror with a capital H. Damn. This book coaxed my brain into stunning, dark places. I suppose I’m a little bit in awe. The evil here - you can't really wrap your head around it. It’s monstrous, but it’s not a monster. If that makes sense.
Look, I almost feel like I can’t recommend this. It will fuck you up and leave you wrung out. But it’s a five star book, for sure, and its brilliant premise, vivid prose and deliciously rich themes will stick with me for a long time. I mean … okay, I need a drink.