Familiar Spirit by Lisa Tuttle

Home is where the horror is

The first I read of Lisa Tuttle was her short story collection, A Nest of Nightmares (also published by Valancourt under their “Paperbacks From Hell” banner). That book offered a treasure trove of Twilight Zone-esque short stories that assured that Tuttle is a horror author of the same caliber as Daphne du Maurier, J. B. Priestley, and Stephen King.

My favorite tales from that collection were Flying to Byzantium and A Friend in Need (both depicting scenarios of existential terror where one’s own reality and past is somehow twisted beyond recognition) and The Nest (a creepy story involving a giant bird-creature that comes in through a hole in the attic).

Many of the stories crescendo with a twist or finish with an open-ended sense of being unresolved; as though they only hint at the true scale of their terrible nightmares. Or that there is another terrible shoe still yet to drop.

Familiar Spirit, being a novel, means that Tuttle’s rich imagination has much more time and space to flesh out the world and ensure everything is much more tangible and definite.

The story centers on Sarah, a university student in Austin, TX. She has recently broken up with her boyfriend and, consequently, needs a new place to live. She lucks upon a house for rent at a very good price, but no sooner has she moved in than she is assaulted by some great evil that inhabits the building — something very powerful that is determined to possess Sarah and quite possibly destroy her in the process.

There are elements of existential horror threaded throughout Familiar Spirit: outside of the supernatural elements, Sarah is struggling to redefine herself as a single woman still trying to get over her failed relationship; when she encounters the paranormal malevolence, she battles to determine her own will (she is tempted multiple times to give in to the spirit and questions what it is she truly wants); the spirit forces her to see and interact with things that aren’t really there — yet when she flees the house, the horrors she’s just endured are wiped from her mind, so that unwittingly returns and is attacked all over again…

If the setup sounds like a recognizable haunted house setup, you’re not wrong… But Tuttle uses this story archetype as a springboard for a far more unique story than you might expect: a story highly specific to its characters and location. (On a personal note, having lived in Austin for some time, I delighted in the various references to local landmarks: MoPac, The Driskell, The Drag…)

Familiar Spirit also feels incredibly modern. Originally published in 1983, the novel is a contemporary portrait of sex-positive attitudes. Sarah specifically is a sexually liberated young woman and both she and the book are very matter of fact about her unabashed pursuit of sex and the great and natural pleasure she derives from it.

Indeed, the physical act of sex is a very important aspect of the novel as the spirit requires an extreme physical “orgasm” in order to harness the power it so desperately needs, whether that be a sexual climax or an act of murder.

Familiar Spirit is a rich and compelling narrative that, though rooted in Sarah and her problem demon throughout, branches off into different directions as she pieces together the puzzle of the whole and tries to figure out a solution and a resolution. It is great storytelling, and a wonderfully crafted and plotted horror novel.