A Guest in the House
Emily Carroll
First Second, 2023
Canadian comic creator Emily Carroll first became known for her horror webcomic His Face All Red, collected into the print volume Through the Woods (which won both the Eisner Award and the British Fantasy Award). This is a full-length horror graphic novel for adults, rendered mainly in black and white with dramatic color elements. The protagonist Abby has just gotten married after many years alone. She met her dentist husband David after he moved to town looking for a fresh start with his daughter Crystal, and is doing her best to be a good wife and mother.
David does not like talking about his first wife Sheila, and Abby hears things about their relationship that raise questions: did she really die of natural causes? Abby encounters Sheila's spirit over and over. Most of the time the spirit is friendly, but sometimes it assumes a terrifying aspect. Eventually it tells Abby horrifying things about Sheila's death. Abby has been seeing a neighbor all along. She says she's Beth Wilson, and she lives in the nearby blue house with green trim.
The climax is complex. Sheila and Abby team up against a drunk David, but later Abby discovers that Beth has been misrepresenting herself. She does not live in the neighborhood, and is she actually Sheila, alive after all? The finale is exciting, but confusing. The horror is real–especially the garishly colored ghost/fantasy sequences–but the uncertainty in the finale leaves the reader with an unclear impression. "What actually happened?" is not the question a reader wants to be left with.
Carroll's visual skills are impressive. The family and everyday life scenes are presented in black and white, effective characterization coupled with creative page layout. Sometimes there are talking heads with lots of dialog, but scenes can open up in surprising ways, and there are quietly striking pages with no dialog at all. The contrasting fantasy world has colors, with red being a favorite accent. In many ways this is a quiet family drama, but it veers into surprising bloody places.
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