Deniau's houses were haunted to begin with. All of them. But Rose House was the last-built and the best.
Rose/House is a speculative fiction and locked room murder mystery novella published in 2023 in the English language by Hugo Award-winning American author and classicist Arkady Martine, who also wrote A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace.
The plot of the novella follows the points of view of several characters who have been caught up in the mystery surrounding Rose House, an architectural marvel which is controlled by an apparently-sapient artificial intelligence, built by the late architect and notorious eccentric Basit Deniau.
Deniau left instructions in his will that Rose House may only be accessed once every year, for an interval of seven days at a time, and it may only be accessed by his protege, the architectural historian Selene Gisil. Recently, the Rose House AI has contacted the local police department to inform them that the house has discovered it contains an unidentified dead body, and Gisil - the only plausible murder suspect - has been out of the country the entire time, attempting to keep a low profile to avoid the desperate and aggressive badgering by other architects, art collectors, foreign governments, and media agencies, who want her to grant them access to Rose House. Selene Gisil's name is a clue for readers with a fondness for onomastics; it is recognisably very similar to names which mean 'hostage' and 'foster child.' Arkady Martine has an educational background which prominently features linguistics and the origin of names, and her selection of character names is never by accident or coincidence.
Gisil resents and despises her late mentor, considering his final will to have been the condemnation of not only her career as an independent architect making a name for herself, out from under his influence, but also the destruction of her ability to conduct her own life without constant threats and disturbances. Eventually Gisil is pressured into granting the police department access to Rose House to investigate the murder, and it soon becomes apparent that this is not the only death associated with Rose House.
Rose/House makes some very blatant allusions to Shirley Jackson's novel The Haunting of Hill House, and the creeping dread throughout the story bears a great resemblance to Jackson's work. The opening and closing paragraphs of the narration are a particularly overt homage, using an artistically modified version of the Hill House bookend paragraphs to make it apparent to a particularly savvy reader that Rose House is very much haunted, and not forthcoming on the question of what or who is doing the haunting.
This novella is short enough to read easily in the span of an afternoon, and it is altogether beautiful, even as it is terribly sinister. It does a very fine job at being a murder mystery, with enough surprises to keep the reader engaged and guessing. It also explores the prospect of AI used as a genius loci, and what darker implications attend the possibility of one's home developing a mind and will of its own.
I am happy to recommend Rose/House to anyone who has enjoyed previous works by Arkady Martine, as well as anyone who has enjoyed Shirley Jackson, Agatha Christie, House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski, Rose Red by Stephen King, The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, or Episode Thirteen by Craig DiLouie.
Iron Noder 2024, 08/30