The Other by Thomas Tryon

This book came across my facebook feed. Not sure what signal I’d given to the algorithm that prompted that. I remembered the movie, which played on television shortly after it had been released in theaters in 1972, and remembered being disturbed by it, and disturbed by one scene in particular, but also fascinated by it. I was ten years old in 1972, but it may have been a year or two later that I saw the movie, meaning I would have been about the same age as the main characters of the novel: twin boys Niles and Holland Perry. I didn’t read the book at the time. It had been a bestseller in 1971. But with the facebook reminder I was intrigued to read it now. Not a great read, but better than trash. Call it a summer read.

The story of the novel takes place over the course of one summer in 1935, mostly set at the Perry farmhouse near the rural village of Pequot Landing in Connecticut. But there’s a framing device that brings the novel to the present-day. An unnamed narrator whom we gradually recognize as one of the Perry family’s twin sons, narrates the story from a mental institution in 1970. The narrator voice begins the novel introducing “Part One” then returns to introduce each of the subsequent parts two and three, and also returns at the close. Although the novel is divided into three parts the action is more or less continuous with gaps within as well as between the parts of no more than a week or so. The narrator’s action takes place over a single evening as he lies in his room at the institution staring up at the ceiling and recalling the events of that summer.

in 1935, the Perry twins are thirteen years old. The family is large, and filled with tragedy. Their father, Vining, had been killed the previous November when a heavy trapdoor leading to an apple cellar underneath the barn fell on his head. The mother, called Zan, short for Alexandra, has retreated into a helpless mourning, confused and rarely leaving her room. The family relies on a young maid, named Minnie, to do the cooking and housekeeping. The twins, Holland and Niles, have an older adopted sister named Victoria, called Torrie, nineteen years-old, married and pregnant. She and her husband live at the house. And there’s a grandmother, Ada, Alexandra’s mother, who was born in St. Petersburg. Later in the novel her two sisters visit. The dead father’s brother, George Perry, also lives at the house, recently moved in from Chicago, along with his wife named Valeria but called Aunt Vee, and their son, Russell a year older than the twins and disliked by them.

I won’t summarize the entire plot because the novel depends on mystery. It’s a horror novel, so horrible things happen. It’s creepy more than frightening, though. And the suspense is constructed entirely by the narrator withholding information that would more naturally be revealed much earlier if the author wasn’t deliberately keeping the reader in the dark. I kind of hate that. But I did appreciate that the major mystery is revealed at the end of Part Two not the last page of the novel, so we get the follow-up as well as the build-up. The period details are specific and pleasing. The villagers talk about Bruno Hauptmann and the Lindbergh baby kidnapping. Niles plays Wagner recordings on the Victrola. There’s a coveted family ring that reveals an important plot point.

The horror is entirely human. It’s really about generational trauma and mental illness. There is a slight supernatural element in the ability of the twins and their Russian grandmother to discern each other’s thoughts, but it doesn’t seem like magic, just careful perception and sensitive imagination. The grandmother taught the children to play something called “The Game” which involves focused concentration on an object (a firefly, a rooster, a magician’s trick cabinet) and feeling their way into it. Niles is good at the game. Holland is too distracted. The adopted sister Torrie, can’t do the game at all.

The main characters, except for Niles and Holland are entirely female. There is a grandmother, but no grandfather. There is a mother, but father is dead. There’s a female servant. Uncle George is nearly entirely absent, either at work or playing golf. The grandmother’s two sisters visit, one never married, the other widowed. There’s another widow, Mrs. Rowe who lives up the street. There’s a woman who owns a general store in the village who gossips with other women. The most visible male character is a groundskeeper named Mr. Angelini who is important to the plot but has no significant scenes.

I was struck by one tangential detail in the novel. The boys create a magician character they name Professor Rabbitwaters to perform a magic trick. The name derives from the French name of Niles’ music teacher, Mr. Lapineaux. But I was caught up when I read the name becomes it reminded me of another character from another 1970s-era horror novel, Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. In Ghost Story, from 1979, there’s a mysterious character named Rabbitfoot. Straub’s novel is filled with references to other horror stories, so although the duplicate isn’t exact, I wonder if this wasn’t yet another example of Straub acknowledging his forebears that I hadn’t picked up on.

Thomas Tryon was born in 1926. After serving in the Navy during World War II he attended Yale University, got a degree in Fine Arts, and began a career as an actor. Working regularly but never achieving great success and frustrated by the business, he gave up acting and turned to writing. The Other was his first novel. He also wrote the screenplay for the movie. He continued to write through the 70s and 80s. He died in 1991 of what was originally announced as stomach cancer but was later revealed to have been complications from HIV/AIDS.

I’ve put another of Tryon’s books, Crowned Heads, on hold at the library. I liked his writing well enough to read more and I was intrigued by the description which says it’s a collection of four novellas based on stories of Hollywood legends. After reading The Flutter of an Eyelid and feeling disappointed, I thought this might be closer to the Los Angeles novel I’m looking for.