Conceptually, I love the idea of telling mystery stories through floor plans[1] and this Japanese book sets out to to exactly that. It begins by the author noticing a space between two rooms - a gap in the house that seems to serve no practical purpose - and expands from there, tracing a narrative through the arrangement of walls, windows and doors over several architectural floorplans. The design is functional and while I didn’t love the typesetting, it does manage to feel very different from a regular novel. I say that the cover design was very well done - simple and effective use of vectors by Luke Bird, although now I look at it I’m realising that actually I think I just like floorplans.
Sometimes I read a book in two sittings and somehow have managed to break at an inflection point. The first half of Strange Houses was inspired - a real story emerging from seemingly mundane details. Then the book goes into explanation of why these houses have been built this way and I kind of lost interest. There was a point at which family trees were introduced and I thought that this was going to be another kind of structure that would reveal details through odd interconnectedness, but it didn’t quite happen.
Most of the book is not told in standard prose fiction, but as scripted dialogues between participants and reportage of their movements. Later, when the story delves back in time, there are sections of regular prose, but contained within correspondence, a device that always feels somewhat inauthentic to me.
It’s a shame, because I would recommend the first half of the book without equivocation. I haven’t read the previous Strange Pictures, but skimmed it in the bookshop and it didn’t have the same appeal as the floorplans. I might get it from the library if it’s available, and hold out hope that the forthcoming Strange Buildings will concentrate more on buildings than world-building.
[1] I tried to do this with Proposal for the Elimination of Rick Burgess in my 52 Murders project, but feel that I didn’t quite nail it.