Am I alone? Girl In The Walls writer AJ Gnuse on houses and fear

Author AJ Gnuse lived in an old, strange, beautiful fixer-upper on the outskirts of New Orleans where he feared the worst as a child.

What does home mean to you? … New Orleans writer AJ Gnuse may challenge that.

For most of us, home is a much-loved refuge. But sometimes fears intrude — irrational, perhaps, yet often relatable. It’s a topic AJ GNUSE explores in his debut novel Girl in the Walls.

Maybe it’s a result of being an avid reader, to so often sit alone, hearing the small symphony of noises a house makes as it drifts through the day. There are a lot of sounds, aren’t there? Maybe it’s the thermostat clicking on and off, gurgling pipes or a dripping faucet, a refrigerator tapping, a bird preening in a gutter, insects bouncing against windowpanes, or those gentle thumps as the walls heat and expand under the sun. And then other sounds, so many without much of an explanation, seemingly harmless, unless, of course, the book you’re reading is at all eerie or suspenseful. Then, you might find yourself wondering. I don’t think I’m the only one who’s thought, “What if I’m not alone here?”

Am I alone? … AJ Gnuse. Picture by Sam Yeboah.

Growing up, my family and I lived in an old, strange, beautiful fixer-upper on the outskirts of New Orleans. The house had more than its fair share of inexplicable sounds. My imagination sometimes would run more than a little wild. The creaking of the staircase was a person underneath, pressing an open palm against the boards. A noise in a dark room was someone finding a new position to contort and hide. At night, a set of eyes watched me through the ceiling duct vents. For whatever reason, when I imagined this person who was hiding in my home, my mind landed on the image of a girl — presumably, I guess, because for a young boy nothing else could be so intimidating and unknowable.

As an adult, I can say I’ve outgrown much of my fear of little girls. I would like to be able to say I’ve outgrown the occasional worry that someone is sneaking about my home. Not long ago, spending another pandemic afternoon reading alone at home, I heard in a closet a ball fall from a high shelf to bounce on the floor. The fear that came was an irrational one. I knew this. Even so, my gaze floated unfocused across the page. I listened hard for other sounds from the closet. What might be a footstep. What might be someone breathing. Abruptly, like all those times when I was a kid, my home no longer felt like my home.

Girl in the Walls was my catharsis for that (mostly) childhood fear. By writing the novel, I could take ownership of that odd anxiety, sign my name on its deed, and then make it my own. But as the story grew, I began to realise the book was a way of coping not just with occasional worries about the bumps in the night — but with the very real threats and difficulties for those like me, living on the US Gulf Coast.

Each year in South Louisiana, coastal erosion, rising sea-levels, and super-powered hurricanes threaten to flood and erase our homes. It might seem like a cognitive leap, but in the strange mind that a novel has, the connection made sense. This book became about the love we have for the buildings which hold us, the uncertainty intrinsic in them, and what it means to lose them.

A house with a human secret … and a secret human.

In Girl in the Walls, someone is living secretly in a house. And yes, to the horror of my nine-year-old self, that person is a little girl. And yet, Elise, this girl in the walls, is hardly someone to be frightened by. She’s an orphan who needs love, family, and friends. She’s afraid of losing her home, where the memories of her parents happened. She senses that loss is inevitable, but she holds on as tight as she can, even though it means essentially shrinking into a spectre. She hides herself, lurking in empty rooms, the attic, in the tight spaces between walls — even as a new family moves in.

Girl in the Walls explores the idea that sometimes the greatest threat comes not from what we don’t know, but in our tendency to transform that uncertainty into something frightening in our minds. These homes that shelter us will always remain a little unknowable, but maybe that’s a trait to be grateful for. Just like any good book, perhaps a house should also hold an element of mystery, with something more remaining just beyond reach.

The Girl in the Walls, by AJ Gnuse and published by HarperCollins Australia, is on sale now. In what seems like a theme, our Book of the Month is Kelli Hawkins’ Other People’s Houses. Head to booktopia.com.au and enter code HOUSES at checkout to receive 30 per cent off the RRP of $29.99. And come talk books (and houses!) at the Sunday Book Club group on Facebook.

Originally published as Am I alone? Girl In The Walls writer AJ Gnuse on houses and fear