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silveradeptDespite working on a place where some part of my job is to recommend and suggest books to others, I often have little time to read, so it's probably a minor miracle that I had the time to get through the Night Vale novel The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home.
After finishing the book, I was finally able to figure out what felt off to me about the book and why it didn't land for me as well as it could have. Perhaps if I had listened to it on audiobook, Mara Wilson's narration would have helped, or at least smoothed things over enough that I wouldn't have noticed the jarring thing sufficiently.
Here it is: The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home is a perfectly fine novel, well-executed and compelling, but it is not a Night Vale novel.
The frame of the story goes back and forth between a mostly modern day time in Night Vale, where the Faceless Old Woman is interfering mightily in the life of a particular man, trying to set him up with a good woman and keep him out of financial troubles, and past periods, where we hear the origin story of said Faceless Old Woman. The origin story is a revenge narrative, as the Faceless Old Woman (young, and definitely with a face) spends much of her time questing for revenge, at first against a mysterious order she believes responsible for the death of her father, then against the person truly responsible for that death and for sending her on that revenge, her father's business partner.
The Faceless Old Woman never gets revenge on that partner, as her last, best plan to trap him and kill him is doomed to failure, as he has sniffed it out and replaced her operatives with his own. The trap springs on her, instead, and she is condemned to a certain amount of unlife at about two thirds of the way in to the story, at which point the two narratives converge, for it turns out that while the Faceless Old Woman never gets direct revenge on the man that killed her, she can manifest enough and well enough to interfere with the lives of his sons, and so she does, setting them up with sensible, good women and making them able to provide for a family, so they have a son, and then, sheet having had a son, she manifests herself to kill the father, so that the next soon will also grow up fatherless, until he has a son, and the cycle continues. The last modern chapter is her explaining to the tiny son all of what she's going to do to him, when it's his turn, with the perhaps hope for him that at some point, the Faceless Old Woman will decide she's had enough of revenge and go on to whatever happens next, but the narrative makes it equally clear that so long as there are sons who have sons, she intends to continue taking her revenge on the descendants of the man who betrayed her.
It's a well-written story, and the twists are good, and the realization dawns slowly, and the path of revenge draws the Faceless Old Woman to Night Vale, but ultimately I think it falls as a novel of Night Vale, not last because the town and its residents are mostly the background. You could remove all of them, and the story would stand perfectly well on its own. More importantly, though, this narrative lacks the right feel of Night Vale, for me. Night Vale is absolutely the kind of place where cosmic horrors walk the streets and generations-deep revenge plots are called out, but they're usually either played for very low stakes or deadpan comedy, as something that just happens in Night Vale, and not with the earnestness and seriousness that the Faceless Old Woman's generational revenge plan happens. Some of that may be due to the narration in the podcast, because Cecil often comes across as a Cloudcuckoolander, but even in the serious moments, there are interludes of either humor or Dadaist absurdity to break them up. The segments in the modern era are supposed to provide that in the novel, but they come across as cruel rather than funny. (Again, maybe Mara provides that missing tone in the audiobook.)
It's interesting to see how that story didn't work with the attached setting when the Within The Wires novel, You Feel It Just Below The Ribs, very much effectively tied into its setting. WtW is supposed to be more foreboding and dark, with hints at shadows just outside your vision that you don't really want to look at, so it's probably and easier match, but maybe it's also a progression of craft.
In any case, yes, I'm reading years-old books at this point and posting about them like there's still meta discussions to be had instead of already having happened everywhere where the Night Vale fans are. If you're a fan of the podcast, unless there's a specific plot point or series of plot points that reference what went on in this work, I'd say to pass on it and read a different Night Vale novel.
After finishing the book, I was finally able to figure out what felt off to me about the book and why it didn't land for me as well as it could have. Perhaps if I had listened to it on audiobook, Mara Wilson's narration would have helped, or at least smoothed things over enough that I wouldn't have noticed the jarring thing sufficiently.
Here it is: The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home is a perfectly fine novel, well-executed and compelling, but it is not a Night Vale novel.
The frame of the story goes back and forth between a mostly modern day time in Night Vale, where the Faceless Old Woman is interfering mightily in the life of a particular man, trying to set him up with a good woman and keep him out of financial troubles, and past periods, where we hear the origin story of said Faceless Old Woman. The origin story is a revenge narrative, as the Faceless Old Woman (young, and definitely with a face) spends much of her time questing for revenge, at first against a mysterious order she believes responsible for the death of her father, then against the person truly responsible for that death and for sending her on that revenge, her father's business partner.
The Faceless Old Woman never gets revenge on that partner, as her last, best plan to trap him and kill him is doomed to failure, as he has sniffed it out and replaced her operatives with his own. The trap springs on her, instead, and she is condemned to a certain amount of unlife at about two thirds of the way in to the story, at which point the two narratives converge, for it turns out that while the Faceless Old Woman never gets direct revenge on the man that killed her, she can manifest enough and well enough to interfere with the lives of his sons, and so she does, setting them up with sensible, good women and making them able to provide for a family, so they have a son, and then, sheet having had a son, she manifests herself to kill the father, so that the next soon will also grow up fatherless, until he has a son, and the cycle continues. The last modern chapter is her explaining to the tiny son all of what she's going to do to him, when it's his turn, with the perhaps hope for him that at some point, the Faceless Old Woman will decide she's had enough of revenge and go on to whatever happens next, but the narrative makes it equally clear that so long as there are sons who have sons, she intends to continue taking her revenge on the descendants of the man who betrayed her.
It's a well-written story, and the twists are good, and the realization dawns slowly, and the path of revenge draws the Faceless Old Woman to Night Vale, but ultimately I think it falls as a novel of Night Vale, not last because the town and its residents are mostly the background. You could remove all of them, and the story would stand perfectly well on its own. More importantly, though, this narrative lacks the right feel of Night Vale, for me. Night Vale is absolutely the kind of place where cosmic horrors walk the streets and generations-deep revenge plots are called out, but they're usually either played for very low stakes or deadpan comedy, as something that just happens in Night Vale, and not with the earnestness and seriousness that the Faceless Old Woman's generational revenge plan happens. Some of that may be due to the narration in the podcast, because Cecil often comes across as a Cloudcuckoolander, but even in the serious moments, there are interludes of either humor or Dadaist absurdity to break them up. The segments in the modern era are supposed to provide that in the novel, but they come across as cruel rather than funny. (Again, maybe Mara provides that missing tone in the audiobook.)
It's interesting to see how that story didn't work with the attached setting when the Within The Wires novel, You Feel It Just Below The Ribs, very much effectively tied into its setting. WtW is supposed to be more foreboding and dark, with hints at shadows just outside your vision that you don't really want to look at, so it's probably and easier match, but maybe it's also a progression of craft.
In any case, yes, I'm reading years-old books at this point and posting about them like there's still meta discussions to be had instead of already having happened everywhere where the Night Vale fans are. If you're a fan of the podcast, unless there's a specific plot point or series of plot points that reference what went on in this work, I'd say to pass on it and read a different Night Vale novel.
