Life itself could not be possessed, really, not even a minute of it. She saw it with sudden clarity; life kept slipping away from you, it kept shifting and changing, like the dancing lights in the false stones, shifting and changing and shooting off into the shadows without you. It was all just a reflection. People were only reflections. - - - [W]hile you wandered there in the darkness—then you couldn't even find the shape or the heart of yourself—and that was terrible, and you were afraid...

When my bookshelf is about to crumble down and twenty library books have been standing on the table unopened for weeks simply because I just can't seem to decide what to read next, I've noticed that the only way to get rid of the antsy feeling is to either focus on watching movies (these days I try to watch one at least every other evening before going to sleep) or to read something that feels familiar somehow. The latter choice usually involves Agatha Christie, but this time I wanted to try something that was familiar to me through movies.

You guessed it: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962) is one of my favorite films and also the tour de force of the psycho-biddy genre. It's creepy, crude, odd, and Bette Davis plays demented old ladies so well. What's not to like? I haven't seen it in a while, but as far as I can tell, it's very faithful to the book. However, sometimes it means that it's pointless to read the book after you've seen the movie, because everything is so by the numbers and over and done with.

Why should you check out the novel in this case, then?

Simply because Farrell is a great writer. To be honest, I was expecting a cheesy pulp classic (not a bad thing), but I don't know where I got that from. When I remember all the boring, clichéd and flat contemporary thrillers I've had the misfortune to come across with, Farrell's writing stands out even more. It's beautiful and insightful, but also sparse and economical in all the right places. Of course, a good thriller needs a good pacing and lots of suspense as well, and WEHBJ passes that test with flying colors. I had a long break in reading because I had to do other stuff, but when I came back I was sucked into the world again and breezed through a hundred pages in a day.

What also helps to elevate WEHBJ above other more pedestrian thrillers is the pinch of unpredictability in the ending. It tips the scale into a more sad territory with the revelation that might potentially get the reader to feel sorry for Blanche, but which will at least cause you to re-evaluate everything that has happened. There's no question that Blanche is unhinged and delusional in thinking that everything she did was only because she was forced into it by other people's actions, but the reason for that massively questionable behavior is left for the reader to decide.

The uncertainty that lingers on after the ending, the fact that everything isn't actually resolved and tied into a neat little bow so that we can move on knowing that everything is alright again, won't appeal to everyone. Personally, I love the symbolic ellipsis that I've seen so many times in horror anthology TV shows and in some Stephen King short stories. That's what horror or suspense is at its best: uncertainty, ambivalence, and the dread of evil squashing your happy ending.