Any mild spoilers within this review that I can’t really avoid will be italicized so that readers may skip those sections if they want to.
Following her divorce, Kara (called “Carrot” by the two most sympathetic side charactersl) moves into a spare room her Uncle Earl has fixed up for her in his home—which happens to also be a tourist attraction called the Glory to God Museum of Natural Wonders, Curiosities, and Taxidermy, mostly called the Wonder Museum, where Kara repays his hospitality by helping him run the museum and catalogue the wacky and sometimes tacky “exhibits” in his eclectic collection, a never-ending task in a place with no formal organization and a constant in-flow of donated “oddities” from Uncle Earl’s friends from afar.
When Uncle Earl needs to stay with his own sister, Kara’s mother, to take it easy following a knee surgery, Kara stays at the Wonder Museum to cover for his absence and continue her inventory of the objects within. She’s not long on her own before someone knocks a hole in a wall and Kara finds, on the other side, an impossible concrete hallway. Enlisting the help of Simon, the barista who works at the coffee shop next door (in the same building, also owned by Uncle Earl, who lets his tenants pay their rent in free coffee), Kara investigates the strange hallway.
What they find is another world, one which does not look horrifying at first but turns out to be deeply uncanny and terribly dangerous. Kara and Simon explore a little, but a terrible discovery sends them running, lost, into the strange world. They must learn what the perils are in that place, figure out how to avoid them, and find their way home before they fall prey to what hunts in that other place—and they must make sure if they do get home that they don’t lead anything back to our world.
First of all, this premise is like catnip for me. I love holes in things that are not supposed to have holes in them. I love the idea of going through one of those holes and finding someplace I’ve never been and never would have been (in the really real world that would be, what, some ductwork above the drop-ceiling in a school or if I ever get really lucky maybe a secret room, though I’ve never gotten that lucky yet). And getting to go to another world where the rules are different than they are here has been a favorite daydream of mine ever since I first read any of the Narnia books. From very early in this book I knew that this is the kind of horror scenario I would 100% fall for, which made it very fun.
One of horror’s eternal questions is “why doesn’t the main character just leave,” and I think that the character of Uncle Earl answers this question so nicely for Kara in The Hollow Places; he is sweet and kind but not without flaws, in a way that feels genuine and lets the reader really feel Kara’s motivation in making sure that whatever is happening to her can’t also happen to him.
I also love the way that Kara’s divorce is presented in the book—her ex-husband is obnoxious but not some monster, the divorce was an upheaval but not riddled with drama. It struck me as a very realistic depiction of what many divorces must feel like. Painful, yes, but not horrifying in and of itself, and awkward in the often-overlooked way that painful things are often also awkward. It was a great setup and it was carried through the book really well, of diminishing importance to Kara as the events of the novel unfolded.
The sense of adventure in this book was really enjoyable (for the reader, I mean—it was clearly not an enjoyable adventure for Kara and Simon). There were parts, near the beginning, when I knew that I would have been reading with a touch of envy if I had somehow missed that this is a horror novel.
The characters were engaging and realistic. The ones who were meant to be likable were very likable and the ones who were meant to be unlikable were very unlikable, but never in a way that felt over-the-top or cringeworthy. Simon was so fun, and although Uncle Earl didn’t get a ton of page-time I love him. Kara was a relatable main character who I sympathized with throughout the book without feeling like she was an author insert or reader insert character. I also liked that the tension and adventure in this book were balanced with a thread of humor that felt very grounded in the kind of jokes and comedy I encounter on the daily on social media; it was a specific and realistic kind of humor that added so much to Kara’s voice on the page.
There were only a couple of places where I felt the narrative fell a little flat for me.
The first is that though the tension and the pacing were perfect and there’s no question why the characters were terrified, most of the book didn’t make me feel frightened. Tense, yes! Engaged, interested, eager to see what happens next, yes! But mostly not afraid.
The second is that the revelation of the catalyst that led to the events of the book felt obvious to me. This is something I feel is worth noting in case others find this aspect of the book unsurprising as well, when I think it was meant to be something more mysterious. It’s not, however, something I would really hold against the book or the author—I often see things coming like this.
For me, the strongest part of the entire book was the climactic scene (a little spoilery content coming) when Kara has figured out what caused the opening to another world in the Wonder Museum because it brings some aspects of that other world to ours, and the exhibits in the museum are all that allow her to survive, and the reason she works out for that during the final scenes in the book, was so well done. The tension of that climactic scene was the best in the whole book, the descriptions and visuals were so eerie and unsettling, and the main character’s best guess at an explanation at the end was so touching it actually choked me up a little bit.
Finally, I really enjoyed how the story was resolved—aside from being touching it also had just the right balance between explaining things and leaving some mystery, and it ended with the same thread of humor that ran through the whole story, without making that humor the focal point of the falling action of the book.
The Hollow Places by T. Kingfisher was a really enjoyable read and I definitely recommend it. If you had any different interpretations of the book, or want to discuss any points, please feel free to leave a comment!
This review has been an excerpt from my monthly newsletter, C.J. Dotson’s Dreadful Dispatch. You can find the rest of this issue of the newsletter here, complete with a writing update and some horror chat as well as my review of Evil Dead Rise, and some pictures of my pets. If you like what you read, subscribe!