Because nothing good in horror novels based on true events ever happens in the basement. The last line of Chapter Twenty-Three is “Let it go where it goes,” and it’s followed by the only line in Chapter Twenty-Four: “Where it went was to the basement.”Ĭhilling. While reading the book, two moments drilled me in the gut and filled me with dread. He’s torn but witnessing the taboo acts is seductive and almost paralyzing to a 12-year-old boy, especially if an adult gives him permission.Īn entire college course could be devoted to The Girl Next Door, discussing the psychology of authority, the bystander problem, group peer pressure, permission, violence, and voyeurism. David is part of the group who witnesses Meg’s torture but is afraid to tell anyone.
In the book, David is a likable boy, but his inability to act is frustrating. I was David, catching crayfish in the creek, going to carnivals, hanging out with the neighborhood kids, and playing baseball. This book hit me hard, I think because the first part describes my boyhood to a T. It dilutes the horror to a level the reader can process. It allows the reader to only know the horror that David remembered secondhand and not experience all the horror Meg endured in real time. The genius of The Girl Next Door is Ketchum’s decision to tell the story in first person through the point of view of David in flashback mode. The entire book is like Ketchum trying to explain the unexplainable through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy. It was almost like he didn’t want to write it, but had to because the tragedy gnawed at his soul. The main characters are the cruel ringmaster and mother Ruth the teenage victim Meg and narrator David, a boy who witnessed the crime.Īs difficult as it is reading The Girl Next Door, writing it must have been harder for Ketchum. In The Girl Next Door, Ketchum changes the names and sets his story in 1958 suburbia. The book evokes those feelings, too, but shies away from describing the worst of the worst. I don’t recommend reading about it because if you have a heart, it will make you angry and sad and sick. Reading details of the actual crime pale in comparison to reading the book. Published in 1989, the book is loosely based on the 1965 torture and murder of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens in Indiana by her caregiver Gertrude Baniszewski, Baniszewski’s children, and other neighborhood youths. The Girl Next Doorby the late Jack Ketchum is the most depressing and devastating horror novel I’ve ever read.
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