Liar: Memoir of a Haunting by E.F. Schraeder

Omnium Gatherum, 2021

ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1949054347

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition ( Bookshop.org | Amazon.com )

Alex and Rainey, a lesbian couple ready to escape their home in the hostile Midwest, embark on a long process of visiting Vermont and searching for a house so they can move there. Each house they visit has an ominous feel or dark history… that is, until they visit the Sugar House, a beautiful but isolated property with the primary disadvantage being that it is in a cell phone black hole. Together, they decide to buy the house and move there. Or do they? Told in alternating points of view, piecing together what actually happened is difficult to do. Rainey talks about having misgivings over the house and Alex talking her into it, with the understanding that they’ll live there together. Alex says she never planned to move there and talks about Rainey saying she wanted the peace and quiet of an off-grid life. Rainey finds herself living there alone as Alex travels for work and cares for her mother, who has dementia, in their hometown. It turns out that vacationing in Vermont as a couple is much different than being a lesbian living alone in an insular community and an isolated area, without a reliable way to communicate with the outside world, and gun-toting men frequently knocking on your door to ask if you are home alone and have a working phone. Rainey, who has worked hard to deal with past trauma, finds that it is emerging again. She develops insomnia, becomes obsessed with the trees over the house and local disappearances, and begins to sound more and more paranoid and lost. Despite regular calls, she isn’t getting though to either her therapist or to Alex about how disorienting and disturbing both her exterior and interior lives are becoming.

Alex, tied up with work, travel, and caring for her mother, is discovering the Rainey she knew is changing into someone who is exhausting to talk to and deal with. Alex is becoming frustrated– how terrible can it really be to live in peace and quiet with nature all around you? Her weekends in Vermont are no longer relaxing: they’re taken up with chores. When Rainey suddenly goes quiet and Alex receives a phone call from a neighbor, she rushes to the Sugar House to search for Rainey and finds and reads her journal for clues. On Rainey’s mysterious return, they both acknowledge that there is some kind of presence in the Sugar House.

You would think that these major miscommunications and red flag behaviors would be a death knell for a relationship. Rainey, a humanities professor, gets meta when Alex suggests writing about the experience as a haunted house story, noting that in haunted house stories it’s practically a trope for the story to document the fracturing of a self or of a relationship. Certainly we do see the cracks into Rainey’s sense of self, but while Rainey and Alex’s relationship struggles, the two of them never talk about breaking things off. Rather than discuss what they’re thinking or feeling with each other, they paper it over. People in relationships do this, but it was so frustrating that nothing was resolved.

Schraeder writes with vivid descriptions of the outdoors. I could almost see the snow and hear the aspens shaking. I did feel like the ending got a little confusing, and feel like it could have been fleshed out a little more. Rainey’s thoughts and experiences as she went down the rabbit hole seemed very believable. Liar: Memoir of a Haunting is definitely a different take on the haunted house story.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski