Book Review: The Last House on Needless Street

The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward


This book was recommended to me in an “you may also like” vein after a book I liked very much, so I had high expectations, especially with the glowing blurbs from famous people. Twists and turns, psychological thriller, hint of dark magic. Sounded up my alley.

It starts out kind of tedious. Ted is not an easy guy to like. He acts like a developmentally disabled child who likes candy and watching birds, but he’s also an alcoholic with bad hygeine. Olivia is a cat, so you expect her to be sanctimonious, but she’s also literally Christian, which is weirder than the fact that she apparently knows how to read. Lulu is sometimes six and sometimes sixteen, it seems, where she rides a tricycle but also talks back and has quite the attitude.

The atmosphere of the book is paranoia. Ted is paranoid about people finding out how weird he is. Sometimes Ted acts like a kind and responsible adult, and sometimes he acts like a psycho who has a hard time passing for normal. The house is dark, the windows all covered in plywood with peepholes to the outside world. He apparently feeds his cat people food, and she’s always hungry. He also has a daughter who lives with him sometimes, but no one sees her and she says he’s not her real dad. She may or may not be the long-lost sister that the vengeful Dee next door is searching for.

Although the description of this book on Goodreads mentions serial killers in the first line, the description on Audible didn’t mention it, so I was really disgusted to learn that I was listening to a story about a serial killer. It was like eating curry someone made for you and finding out halfway through that the reason it tasted off is that it was made with the meat of the neighbor’s dog who died last week. That’s the of disgust I felt. I fucking hate serial killers and am offended that people treat them like folk heroes. Maybe I should have been tipped off that someone cruelly killed birds in the first scene. The description of child-torture is something I could have done without.

What this book does well is keep you wondering what is going on. Details are revealed little by little. Lulu uses a tricycle because she doesn’t walk, and she can’t walk because of something Ted did to her. There’s a good reason why Ted’s mommy lost her job. A bloody flip flop is a crucial clue to what happened to “girl with popsicle.” The good news is, things are resolved at the end and it all sort of gets wrapped up in a bow.

The bad news is, it’s all a lie. Ted is an unreliable narrator. Lulu is an unreliable narrator. Dee is an unreliable narrator. The cat is an unreliable narrator. So many times, characters would tell you something happened and later you find out that wasn’t true at all. That thing that happened with Ted and Lauren when they went to the mall? Didn’t happen the way it was first explained. When Ted uses the big knife and cuts Olivia’s fur off? Couldn’t have happened the way she described it. Even Dee is lying about the day her sister disappeared. There were continuity errors which first seemed like sloppy editing, but later seemed like part of the author’s intent. The jewelry box is broken and then it’s fixed. The rug is orange and then it’s blue. The picture frame is sold and then it’s there again and then it’s missing. After a while you realize that nothing is as it seems. Is Lauren Ted’s daughter? Is Lauren the same Lauren Dee is looking for? Is Olivia even a cat? Is any of this real? If you loved those television shows where every episode just made you more and more confused, you might find this delightful. If you, like me, were the kind of person who wanted to throw a shoe at the screen during Twin Peaks telling them to explain everything already and what was so wrong with a coherent narrative, for crying out loud, you’re going to be frustrated.

By the time we get to the end and the bad person dies and the good person is redeemed and the lost child goes home and the stray cat gets adopted and everyone finds love, I’d lost patience. I was glad it wrapped up, but I still didn’t like any of these liars. You can’t tell me someone is a psycho killer and then say they’re not, and then say they are, and then say they’re not and have me go “well, okay then that’s all right.” Are we supposed to forget what he did to the mouse and the bug man, or was that a lie too?

Did any of it happen? The back and forth of what was true and what wasn’t true tried my patience. There’s this imagery of birch trees and red birds that both Ted and Dee see, and hints about “the white gods” in the forest and Ted’s mommy’s oblique refernces to the “encou” (not sure how it’s spelled, as it was an audiobook). I would have liked more of that, but it’s all just symbolic window dressing, as unreal as half the scenes the characters describe. I wondered at the logistics of how “little girl with popsicle” could have been taken by the person who supposedly took her in the window of time available to the killer (and the witnesses of the killer’s family) but by then I just got tired of trying to keep track of it all, and I just got so weary of the “this happened, but no it didn’t, this happened, but no it didn’t” that I was just glad to be done with it.



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