Amity

Amity
by Micol Ostow
New York: Egmont
2014
361 pages




Most people are familiar with the story The Amityville Horror, either in book or film form. The movie version with Margot Kidder and James Brolin was one of the first haunted house movies I was allowed to watch.

I remember when the story of the Lutz family was published in such magazines as Good Housekeeping. There are so many websites about them and their house, and people are still debating as to whether or not they were telling the truth. The movie has been updated and sequelized and prequelized and transformed so often that it is unrecognizable. This story has probably influenced all haunted house movies and books since it came out.

Of course, the house still stands and people live in it, quite happily by most accounts. But ghost hunters and gawkers still make pilgrimages to see the famous house.

Micol Ostow, a New Yorker, has taken up the challenge of writing a new fictional teen story about the Amityville house. Our story is split between a time about ten years ago, following Connor and his dysfunctional family's move into the house, and Gwen with her family in the present day. Both families have hopes for a new beginning in this house, but the house has other ideas. And yes, this house seems to be alive with a plan of its own for its occupants.

Slowly, in both timelines, our main characters respond to the house. Weird noises are heard, the boat house door bangs and taunts. Various family members see things or respond violently to the atmosphere of the house and have to leave. We end up uncertain as to whether our two main characters are victims or are tools of destruction.

This story does maintain some of the horror and tension needed for a scary story, although I was rather distracted by all of the back and forth, including a change in the fonts for Connor's story and Gwen's. I think I would have preferred having Connor's story as background, and maybe a merging of stories at the end. It is also told by the characters themselves, and possibly that in itself detracted from the horror. I think it is hard to convey the horror of the situation through one person's limited point of view. I don't get the impression that some characters, such as either mother, really seem to notice the atmosphere of the house or the strange behavior of their children.

I think Amity was worth reading, but it wasn't as frightening as it could have been. I'm somewhat disappointed since this story is so familiar. But if you are a collector of haunted house stories, as I am, you should give it a try.

It doesn't look like a haunted house, does it?