The World Inside
In Jan Fields’s stirring horror novel The World Inside, a teenager discovers that her comatose aunt could trap ghosts in paintings.
Tamika could be spending the summer in Paris with her best friends, but her mother dragged her to Virginia instead. There, her Aunt Lati is in a coma. Tamika shrugs off a neighbor’s assertion that Lati’s house is haunted, but the shadowy figures she sees moving in the paintings hanging in her home suggest that the rumors may be true. To help awaken Lati from the coma, Tamika puts her own developing art skills to use.
Tamika’s discoveries in Lati’s house compile at breakneck pace, amping up the thrills with each flash of movement in a mirror or portrait’s mouth opening to speak. Her empathy and curiosity push her to learn more about Lati’s paintings in spite of her fear. Her budding acceptance that she is more like her determined mother than she’d prefer adds an endearing layer to her personality.
This Hi-Lo text refuses to preclude eloquence and vibrancy. Succinct, picturesque language creates arresting imagery, as when a tree is encased in a “burden of vines,” and strengthens characterizations: “Whenever Mom faced anything tough, she took it on as if she were storming a castle.” Tamika loves walking because it brings her “closer to the world,” a straightforward yet revealing statement whose exactness says more about what’s important to Tamika than a paragraph could. And in their emotive conversations, what goes unsaid defines Tamika’s and her mother’s feelings about each other as much as what they say.
The World Inside is a chilling supernatural novel in which a girl wields her love of art as a tool to help ghosts move on.
Reviewed by
Aimee Jodoin
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
