Objects in the Rearview Mirror by F. E. Feeley, Jr.

[Ulysses]

F. E. Feeley’s first book, The Haunting of Timber Manor, was a good book, and got four stars from me. I had to give this one five stars—reluctantly, because I don’t like giving away five stars—simply because it is a degree better, tighter, more emotionally packed than its very good precursor.

On one level this is a simple story about a haunted house. But it is also a complex story about how dark emotions—fear, anger—can haunt our lives as thoroughly as any ghosts. Feeley has taken the rather baroque gothic novel paradigm of Timber Manor and pared it down to a taught psychological thriller.

Jonathan David is a recently successful young writer, heading to Kansas to join his husband in their new home near the college town of Manhattan. His husband, Eddie Dorman, is a clinical psychologist who has just landed a dream job with a tenure track at the university. Together they have bought a lovely old colonial revival house in a small town in America’s heartland. They even have a friendly widow next door to welcome them with a freshly-baked pie.

What a set-up.

We know it’s a set-up because of the disturbing prologue with which Feeley starts the book. But it takes a while before we understand how the prologue fits into the narrative, and by the time we do we’re completely unnerved. Feeley builds the suspense, tightening the screws bit by bit. The writing is clean and contemporary, which makes the growing creepiness all the more effective.

Throughout the novel, the loving relationship between Jonathan and Eddie, the damaged man and his protecting partner, is unfolded in equal measure as the anxiety heightens. From an outwardly happy-go-lucky pair of handsome gay professionals, our boys reveal themselves to as two men who have worked hard to achieve what they have together, and who place their love for each other above all else. As the fear ratchets up, so does the intensity of their love.

If mainstream America was willing to give equal time to gay couples (and it is not, just look at what Hollywood offers us), this would make a tremendous psychological thriller. It is not unduly violent, although there are strong threads of child abuse and domestic violence that are as harrowing as any poltergeist. It is a beautiful love story and a frightening ghost story, and I would pay good money to see it on the silver screen.

The appearance, very briefly, of Francine, the Creole psychic from Feeley’s first book, suggests a unifying thread in the author’s novels. While there will be no sequel to Objects in a Rearview Mirror, we can expect more haunted souls in Feeley’s next books.

Something to live for.