The Uninvited (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Uninvited Deborah Stevenson Wynne-Jones, Tim. The Uninvited. Candlewick, 2009 [352p]. ISBN 978-0-7636-3984-6 $16.99 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 8–12 A little cottage-cum-studio in rural Ontario turns out to be the crossing point for several lives. Jay, who grew up nearby, has been staying there for a few years, working on his music, and then Mimi turns up there to escape a pursuing, possibly stalking, ex; they’re shocked to discover they’re half-siblings, both given permission to use the place by their father, who’s more successful at art than at parenting. They’re both unsettled by the repeated incursions into the cottage by somebody who seems to come and go as he pleases, and who seems to be getting bolder, but it’s hard to tell where, amid the various seeming threats, the real danger lies. Wynne-Jones offers a classic horror-film setup, with a beautiful young woman in an isolated location [End Page 424] beset by aggressive and yearning men, and polishes it up to make a rewarding and complex genre entry. The red herrings aren’t entirely fishy, as they’re all genuinely menacing, especially Cramer, who turns out to be yet another undiscovered half-sibling, who has been shadowing Jay out of jealousy and Mimi out of longing (misplaced, but he doesn’t know that), and who has his own danger at home with his crazy, cruelly demanding mother. The third-person narration shifts gracefully between Cramer’s and Mimi’s points of view, offering that familiar genre sense of a disastrous pending convergence; there’s a clever use of genre tropes also in the final twist. Overlaying it all is the implication that Mimi’s heedless father has sown the seeds for the tragedy with his cavalier use of people, but at heart this is enriched suspense, enjoyable for its mounting tension as the flammable events draw closer to their expected explosion. Copyright © 2009 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois