Accumulation

We’re house shopping at the moment as we prepare to relocate for the day job, and I keep thinking about the ghosts we’ll find in the new home - not literal ghosts, but that one door that always sticks, the bathroom where the water pressure is never as good as the other bathroom, no matter what you do, that creepy doll in the child size rocking chair that is at the end of the small hallway in the basement that leads to the crawlspace. (Actually, those are the ghosts we found when we moved in here.) 

Accumulation by Aimee Pokwatka is kind of a haunted house domestic horror. Tenn, a documentary filmmaker turned wedding videographer because life be like that sometimes, and her husband Ward, move with their two kids from North Carolina to New York. In a tale as old  as time, or at least as old as The Amityville Horror, the move was meant to strengthen their marriage (though the pre-move details are unclear), and Ward sinks all their money into buying Tenn’s dream home.  They both have new jobs, but Ward’s is the one that will support them with his new six figure salary.

You see where this is going. With unpacking, the children’s issues adjusting, etc., all the mental - and physical - load pretty quickly goes to Tenn, so much so that she loses her new job only a few days in. She feels like they are stuck in the same routine day after day, even the strange things happening at the house, doors getting stuck, faucets (well, one faucet) always running, a nail that keeps popping up, over and over and over, are the same, but we also figure out pretty quickly that Tenn may not be the most reliable narrator. So what is going on? Fortunately, Tenn gets to ghost hunting, and though I think we figure out kind of what’s going on before she does, I was very happy with the conclusion. 

Thank you to NetGalley and Putnam for the advance copy for my unbiased review.