Book Notes: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay

The Cabin at the End of the World

by Paul Tremblay

Finished 4/26/20

Riveting, devastating, and thoughtful.

The plot is fairly straightforward. A gay couple with an adopted daughter is taking a vacation in a remote cabin in New Hampshire. They are visited by four individuals who, after breaking into the cabin and taking them hostage, tell them that they have to choose one of them to kill or the world will end.

After reading this, I’m fairly convinced that Paul Tremblay has been working his way through horror and thriller tropes, blasting them into another dimension with every approach. “A Head full of Ghosts” was a demonic possession story in an age of reality television and economic crisis. “Disappearance at Devil’s Rock” was a child abduction tale, jury-rigged and unstable due to the unreliability of memory, relationship, and history. Now with “Cabin at the End of the World” Tremblay has taken the home-invasion sub-genre and transformed it into a story about faith, politics, mass-media and ecological disaster.

I have consistently appreciated Tremblay’s insistence on ambiguity and uncertainty as key modes of good horror. Folks looking for a Scooby-doo mask removal at the end should steer clear, as the novel leaves some of its central narrative questions unanswered, in favor of a focus on the characters and the resolution of their relationships to one another. To me, it’s a far more rich and engaging way of writing horror.

As usual, Tremblay is interested in how media and mass culture intersect with personal tragedy and terror. A central plank of the story hangs on the simultaneous repetition and manufactured shock and doom of 24 hours news channels, and the degree to which they tell us anything significant about the world of which we weren’t already aware. There’s actually some fairly deep rumination here about the relationship between media narrative and prophecy, and the ways in which our minds can organize the same information in ways that alternative mundane or profoundly significant.

It’s not like it’s a particularly lonesome or brave opinion, but I think Paul Tremblay is one of the most sophisticated, smart, and engaging writers of horror currently working. “Cabin at the End of the World” is masterfully paced, plays with every tired expectation, and delivers a thoughtful commentary on contemporary mass culture. Brilliant.