Visitation

This chilling book does that trick that effective horror does so well: makes you feel claustrophobic through geography, or the lack thereof. Visitation takes place in a chillingly spooky house. The stories that surround the house and Visitation build a history of horror, taking in the German population during the Jahrhundertwende, the turn-of-the-century shift, and over the following decades of war, National Socialism and Soviet occupation. It's a Who Do You Think You Are? for bricks and mortar; a lineage of hope, despair, love and tragedy framed by an architect's dream weekend home.

The land on which the architect builds has a dark history of violence that began with the drowning of a young woman in the grip of madness and that grows darker still over the course of the century: the Jewish neighbors disappear one by one; the Red Army requisitions the house, burning the furniture and trampling the garden; a young East German attempts to swim his way to freedom in the West; a couple return from brutal exile in Siberia and leave the house to their granddaughter, who is forced to relinquish her claim upon it and sell to new owners intent upon demolition.

The book uses symbolism to capture lost generations, haunted landscapes and the horror at the core of a population of people to excavate the secrets and horrors that lie in this house.