Strange Houses - A Review

What’s to like: How many details we can miss in a drawing (in this case, a floor plan), and what unexpected things they can mean.

As mentioned in my review of Strange Pictures, Uketsu is an amazing writer, and he doesn’t fail to prove that with this book as well. It starts off with Uketsu’s friend coming to him with the floor plan of a house in Tokyo which he plans to buy with his wife, that, though previously lived in, is relatively new. At first glance, the house looks like a normal duplex, but the story lies in the details.

Something doesn’t sit right with him, so he asks for help from Kurihara (yes, the same one from Strange Pictures), a draughtsman in an architecture firm with a special love for horror and mystery stories. He begins to unravel all the details that make this house a little unsettling — the dead space in the kitchen on the ground floor, the vestibule-like entry to the child’s room on the first floor, and the absence of windows in this supposed child’s room, making it seem like the previous family of three who lived here kept the child captive. Also, when both floor plans are placed one on top of the other, the two floors are connected by a mysterious passage-like arrangement, leading to diabolical assumptions about the family who built the house and lived in it for a year. But just as the author is about to tell his friend about these details, his friend informs him that they decided not to buy the house, as a dead body has been found in the bushes nearby — cut into pieces, with its left hand missing. This becomes the perfect turning point, leading the author to write an article containing his and Kurihara’s speculations.

In response to this article, the author receives a letter from a girl claiming to know something about the case. When he meets her, she says she is Yuzuki Miyae, wife of Kyoichi Miyae, whom she believes was killed by the previous owners of this strange house. He too was found with his left hand missing — but in another strange house they lived in, in Saitama Prefecture.

In her search for answers, she has obtained the floor plans of that house as well, but unfortunately the house no longer exists, having burned to the ground a few months ago. It bears all the same markings as the Tokyo house — dead spaces, a windowless child’s room, and more. As they examine the similarities and differences and speculate about what must have happened there, Kurihara discovers that Yuzuki is not who she claims to be.

The book follows a similar pattern with four interlinked stories, but compared to Strange Pictures, these narratives have more spontaneous timeline connectivity, making it a fast-paced read filled with deeply unsettling scenarios. Complete with dysfunctional families spread across far-reaching branches and a superstition at the core of it all — leading everyone to make the decisions they do — lies a story that shows how little we take children and their mental development into account, and how hard it is to escape something that binds us to family.

Just as you come to terms with what led to the deaths, Kurihara’s afterword raises new questions about who is truly behind it all and whether everyone is really who they claim to be. The notion that the story is mostly real, yet still hanging in the balance, gives it an eerie feel — and as someone who usually hates open endings, I must say I did not expect to like this one so much.

Do give it a read if you enjoy creepy vibes and a truly talented writing style!

Favorite line character: Kurihara — always and in every book… hoping he appears in Strange Buildings too!