Books That Will Make You Question Reality

Victor LaValle is a master of horror and speculative fiction and, at this point, I automatically read anything he writes. The Devil in Silver was the first book of his I read and it does a pretty great job of making me wonder what in hell is really going on. The story revolves around a group of inmates at a mental institution in Queens, New York, all of whom insist that there is an inhuman creature with the head of a bison and the body of an old man running rampant through the facility, killing patients. This group decides they’re going to end this creature’s reign of terror, killing it before it can kill anyone else. But can their perception of what’s happening to them be trusted? What have they really seen slinking through the hallways and sneaking into others’ rooms?

It’s tough to discuss too much of this novella without ruining its twist. So let me give you a quick synopsis. A group of teens decides to prank one of their friends by sneaking a mannequin into a theater. But then the unthinkable happens: the mannequin comes alive and goes on a murderous rampage. Our protagonist decides he’ll do whatever it takes to stop this mannequin-monster and save everyone he cares about. But at what cost?

You may have noticed a trend in genre preference here. I told you thrillers weren’t my thing. Luckily, horror tends to do just as good a job of exploring the uncanny. This quick read by Jemc certainly does. I was seriously creeped out by this literary horror about a young couple haunted by their new home. But the most terrifying thing of all? As the house decays around them, we’re never really sure whether or not it’s all in their heads.

Switching gears from horror to…satire?…is one of my favorite reads from last year. In this mad rush of a novel, an artist-turned-stay-at-home-mother becomes convinced she is turning into a dog. As her supposed transformation progresses, the mom — who begins to refer to herself as Nightbitch — gets philosophical, sharing her innermost thoughts about motherhood and obligation and power and an inexorable pull toward violence. I have never before empathized so strongly with a protagonist who may or may not be on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

In this reissued horror novel (yes, we’re back on track with all the horror), a man who survives a near-drowning as a child begins to question the details of that day, particularly after racist hate mail directed at his wife places added tension on his home life and makes him start to lose his grip on reality. This supernatural suspense had me hanging on to every word, waiting with bated breath to find out what really happened when he was young. Is reality trying to reassert itself, à la those Final Destination movies? Or is that ridiculous?

Barry’s book is one of those titles that show up in all of my book lists, no matter the topic. But that’s because it rings so many of my bells! In this book, which has been labeled as both sports fiction and occult horror, a field hockey team turns to witchcraft in order to turn around a long-running losing streak. I spent pretty much the entire book unsure of whether the witchcraft element was real or just mere coincidence. Like the girls in the story, I wanted so badly to believe. Perhaps their faith made it so?

This graphic novel is a more recent read. In it, the last survivor of a brutal massacre (your prototypical final girl) begins to lose her grip on reality as the anniversary of the killings approaches, and as another installment of a film franchise based upon the incident hits theaters. As if those weren’t enough, an impending blizzard is also triggering. So when she starts to see the (dead) killer following her around town, we don’t know if the sightings are real or just a product of PTSD. The lines between what is and isn’t real begin to blur further as the story progresses and, by the end, all you can do is sit back and say, “Wait…what just happened?”

And finally, in what I’ve found to be the mindfuckiest mindfuck of them all, the comic series The Department of Truth. In this series, a government agent is recruited by a mysterious organization that appears to be monitoring all the greatest conspiracy theories throughout history, from Bigfoot to flat-Earth theory to the ’80s-era Satanic Panic. To what end? Unclear. But it appears that if enough people believe in a thing, it could actually become real. What might the ramifications of such a possibility be?