This book was requested by a previous Lesbrary reviewer who did not finish or review it. In order to keep my Netgalley feedback up to date, I am submitting this review marking it as a DNF, though it was another reviewer who requested this.

More of a 3.5 I guess.

I’m usually not a personal essay reader, so I frankly don’t know what I was thinking requesting an arc of this. While there were some essays about her personal loss and love and motherhood which were interesting, the rest of them felt just very unrelatable to me. The overarching message the author probably wants to convey also didn’t really get to me. So maybe this was just a disconnect between the subject matter and me as a reader. But I did listen to the audiobook and the author is a very engaging narrator, who made the listening experience quite fun.

I appreciated McOuat’s perspective and manner of expression throughout her essays. Many of them were viewed through the lens of a mother. While I am not a mother, I was able to relate to many of the topics she touched on. I think this is important because this reminds us readers that just because someone becomes a mother it does not erase the other roles or facets of their ever changing and evolving identity. Allyson reminds us that she is not just a mother. She is a woman. She is queer. She is a culmination of a life lived and a number of experiences that made her who she is today. And she is ever evolving.

I feel that most anyone can connect with her essays, on some level, even if they’ve never personally experienced the subjects she explores. If anything this creative nonfiction can be learning experiences that can help readers understand situations they might not have been able to beforehand. Allyson McOuat’s writing style and delivery are easy to absorb, humorous and understandable. Give it a shot, you never know what you might learn.

this essay collection touched on so many different themes and topics, you just have to appreciate what the author meant to do with these. each one felt different and fairly new compared to other essay collections i've read in the past but as a whole it was just a solid collection, nothing too spectacular.

The Call is Coming From Inside the House by Allyson McOuat was an essay collection examining horror through the lens of womanhood, queer identity, motherhood and feminism. Some essays were definitely better than others- I loved the one about Blair Witch Project and the one about Amber Heard 👌 the second half of the collection, I felt, was stronger than the first so I’m glad I read it.

An incredible essay/short stories collection. Like every collection, I had my favorites but overall, none was an actual flop and that shows consistency in the writing so kudos to the author for that. I liked the themes that were touched upon such as queerness, motherhood, grief, and what all of those entail.
I absolutely loved the writing, it was both sharp and beautiful.

I tried really hard to get into this one, but I just wasn't able to. I am still really thankful to the publisher, author, and netgalley for granting me advanced access to this digital collection before publication day.

This collection of stories really hit home for me. From anxiety to trauma to learning how to appreciate the things you’ve gone through, each essay felt like a friend sharing intimate stories with you.

The author finds a way to relate every day fears to media relevant to her and the time period which kept me flipping through each story. Her writing kept me entranced and hooked no matter what stage of her adult life and memories she looked back on. It reminds me that there are other women going through some of the same things, and there’s something to real and comforting about that.

I’ll be thinking about some of these essays for a long time and I’m very happy I read it. Will definitely be recommending!

Thanks to NetGalley and ECW Press for the ARC :)

Struggled to get through this one a bit. It was alright but not the best for sure. Anthologies are usually my favorite

This fell a little flat for me. I think largely because I don’t think I am the target audience so struggled to relate to the essays.

The analysis felt a little shallow in places and several of the cultural references didn’t feel like they were adding to the work

This review is based on a digital ARC provided by the publisher.

REVIEW
I wanted to love The Call Is Coming from Inside the House, I really did.

The cover–which is what initially caught my eye–is gorgeous. It’s haunting, it’s weird, and I wouldn’t say no to owning it as a print.

The summary sealed the deal: queer essays about identity through the lens of horror, 90’s pop culture, and true crime?

That’s so far up my alley it’s in my house.

The Good
McOuat’s prose is vibrant and evocative–when she’s talking about moments from her life.
The images of her running from a coyote, supporting her children through their first experience of loss and grief, and waking up to a man standing at the end of her bed are striking, real, alive.

Those moments are the ones I enjoyed reading, and it’s those moments that I will remember.

My favorite essay, by far, was “The Harbinger (Death at Every Corner).” McOuat examines her extreme anxiety and how she began to have a healthier approach to the voice in her head that warned her about danger at every corner. It was relatable to me in a way that a lot of writing about anxiety isn’t.

However, there were two main sticking points that kept me from absolutely loving the collection: a lack of connection and uninteresting analysis.

The Unconnected
Besides the broad theme, the collection lacks a consistent connecting thread that supports the reading experience; in other words, a consistent, traceable arc from beginning to end.

For example, take In the Dream House, a book with a very similar premise: examining a queer woman’s life through pop culture, horror, urban legend, and thriller tropes (though ItDH is highly experimental with form). ItDH is sustained essay to essay and as a whole with a central connective thread: Machado and the woman’s relationship, which progresses and changes.

The Call Is Coming from Inside the House does not have a central thread.

From essay to essay we oscillate from from fertility treatments to home ownership to divorce to family oral history to the anxieties of teenage girlhood back to her pregnancy.

I could follow each individual essay’s narrative fine, but jumbled snapshots of McOuat’s chronology paired with wildly fluctuating topics made for a disjointed reading experience when considered as a whole.

And individual essays rarely stayed focused. Even my favorite chapter isn’t immune.

“The Harbinger (Death at Every Corner)” begins with two pages talking about Frozen, discussing queercoding and the Hayes Code. Three pages in we finally get around to anxiety (as per the essay’s title, seeing death around every corner). Frozen connects tangentially a few pages later, when she compares how she handled this anxiety to being shut in a castle.

When I finished reading, I had a bevy of questions. What relevance does the Hayes Code have to the idea of the harbinger and intrusive anxiety? Why bother bringing in Frozen, as the harbinger and the final girl tropes (the latter having been mentioned once) could have said much the same while keeping the essay focused around thematically connected topics?

The Boring
I’m not saying that it would be impossible to connect Frozen with the harbinger trope, or that essays shouldn’t bring together disparate concepts.

The reason I have issues is because the analysis of these two concepts is, well… shallow.

Elsa being queercoded? I read that same exact reading on Tumblr a decade ago (seriously, see this post from 2014).

The titular Harbinger trope? Purely exists to explain why McOuat calls her anxiety the Harbinger. Personifying her anxiety as the Harbinger is fine–I like it–but that’s where the lens stops.

There’s also no analysis or connection made between the harbinger concept and Frozen.

To quote the summary, the “examination through the lens” McOuat is doing here boils down to 'my anxiety feels like the harbinger, and I reacted to it like Elsa did, which was by hiding myself away (also did you know Elsa is kinda queercoded?).'

Again, the reason why “The Harbinger (Death at Every Corner)” was my favorite is because when she actually discusses her life, her intrusive thoughts, and how they impacted her as a functioning person and as a mother, the writing is really good. It’s intimate and intense and emotional.

Her experiences speak to me as a person who also deals with those issues, and the framing of the Harbinger could have gone in a really interesting direction!

But it just didn’t, and as a result, the analysis part of the essay–half of the whole essay!–bored me.

Many of her analysis struggles similarly. Her takes are, often, Freshman Intro to Horror level basic.

Her queer and feminist analysis of tropes–such as covens, final girls, and the man at the end of the bed–are both surface level and common knowledge for any queer/feminist horror enjoyer.

For example:

Covens are akin to female/queer community and dressing witchy = flagging.
Final girls are the “right” kind of victim because they fight back.
The man at the end of the bed is voyeurism: the invasion of privacy.


There was nothing new or interesting vis a vis her analysis that made me think about a trope, story, or piece of media in a new or fresh or interesting way.

As a result, I’ve got nothing to intellectually chew on, leaving me, yes, bored for, like, half of every essay.

FINAL THOUGHTS
While I’ve been critical of The Call is Coming from Inside the House, I do think it’s a solid 3 star read. I like McOuat’s prose. When she talks about her life, it’s vivid, emotional, and poignant. She’s a vivid storyteller, and I’d certainly love to read more of her personal essays in the future. I’d go so far as to say I’d love a memoir from her.

Just… temper your expectations when it comes to the “lens” part.

Thank you to ECW Press for providing a digital ARC via Netgalley.

I would say I am a huge fan of memoirs as well as nonfiction. Allyson McOuat's The Call is Coming from Inside the House is a wonderful new addition to my collection. Each essay was well crafted and in a way nostalgic. I absolutely loved this collection and definitely see myself coming back to it

I am not usually a non-fiction reader, and even less of a memoir person, but the description for The Call Is Coming from Inside the House was too intriguing to resist, and I am so glad I gave in. The way Allyson McOuat used horror allegory and imagery to share her experiences really resonated with me, and I found her writing engaging all throughout the novel. Even when I couldn't relate - for example, I am happily child-free - I was still able to empathize and find connection with McOuat as a storyteller and a human being. Definitely a book worth diving into, especially if like me and like McOuat, you're a queer woman with a healthy concern about things that go bump in the night.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for the e-ARC!

I find it hard to review personal essay collections, because so much of it is so subjective. Some of the author’s reflections about her own experiences are well-connected with the pop culture she explores, but overall I found there to be a lack of depth when she tries to extrapolate her findings beyond her own subjectivity. Most of McOuat’s analysis relates to a specific kind of white, cis, queer mother who owns a house, but she then attempts to make larger statements about culture in general, positioning her own understanding as a larger truth, and this didn’t really work for me. Many of the things she claims as fact, using a sweeping “we” to describe, only apply to a very particular experience. It makes sense to write based on personal experience, and to connect those experiences into cultural and social realities, but I wished the author took a more critical eye to her own positionality throughout because it would have given the analysis more depth.

A few key-words are catnip to me when it comes to essay collections: pop culture; queer women; urban legends. Allyson McOuat’s debut essay collection was right up my alley (pun fully intended). It’s a welcome expansion on her piece in The New York Times and an essay collection I thoroughly enjoyed.

McOuat's essays seamlessly blend personal experiences with insights from pop culture, particularly focusing on themes such as motherhood, queerness, pregnancy, true crime, horror movies, bisexuality, patriarchy, and violence. Some particular standouts for me were “The Haunted House,” “The Man at the End of the Bed,” and “The Fortune Teller,” but, really, aside from one or two early chapters where I was likely getting used to McOuat’s writing style, I didn’t feel like there were any misses in this collection.

I tend to find essay collections very hit-or-miss and I think that the more episodic, memoir-like structure of this collection worked in its favor. It also definitely helped that McOuat is heavy on the pop culture references and her pop culture references align with mine very neatly. Her use of film, television, and literature is purposeful and thoughtful, and reminded me of Carmen Maria Machado’s writing, particularly Machado’s essay on Jennifer’s Body. At the same time, I could definitely see how a reader who was less familiar with the 80s and 90s media landscape might find it distancing, so this is definitely a YMMV situation. McOuat provides a helpful reading/watching list (something everyone should do, actually. I love recommended reading. It’s like fun homework.)

While the topics covered in this collection are familiar to me, their treatment is novel. McOuat's references to the supernatural and horror movies offer a fresh perspective on womanhood, particularly queer womanhood. Queer people have always had a particular kinship with horror and the monstrous, but the ways these subjects are tackled are handled with so much care and thought is a treasure. McOuat’s prose is exceptional: I highlighted several passages in my copy purely because I loved the writing. And it’s funny, too! Despite handling such difficult topics — postnatal anxiety, lost love, gender-based discrimination, victim complexes, trauma, pregnancy — Allyson McOuat is just so funny. I’d love to buy her a coffee and pick her mind.

This book is a delight. If you’re at all interested in queer culture, horror pop culture, womanhood, etc., I can’t recommend The Call is Coming From Inside the House enough.

4.5 stars

(Review will be published on 04/19)

In this essay collection, McOuat focuses on topics ranging from queer motherhood to the loss of her mother. Many of the essays cover heavy subject matter, with references to popular culture serving as good examples to back up McOuat's observations on how our society views and treats women.

The writing style is open and honest, and whilst reading it felt like having a conversation with a friend. Many of the experiences McOuat shares will be familiar to many women.

I devoured this in a day and would not hesitate to revisit again later nor to pick up further titles by this author in future.

In these essays, McOuat reflects and seeks for truth and understanding in her experiences as a queer woman, a daughter, and a mother, drawing comparisons to the horror and supernatural films and literature that shaped her. “Wading through the fog of nuance to reach the clarity of truth might be frightening, but I think I’m still going to go looking for it,” McOuat states in the prologue.
Like horror films themselves, the essays in this collection are filled with suspense and a foreboding tone and they were truly addicting. Topics include: queer-coding in film, motherhood and postnatal anxiety, lost love, gender-based discrimination, female friendship, victim complex, women’s trauma, the simultaneous beauty and terror of pregnancy, buying a house with a “history” (read: murder), and so much more.
These read like short stories and I would recommend them to anyone, really, but especially women within (or interested in) the queer community who love horror pop culture.

This collection pleasantly surprised me, deviating from my expectations based on the blurb and title. I appreciated the author's insightful reflections on life, especially her relatable anecdotes about childhood and womanhood. The blend of supernatural elements with discussions on reality added a unique twist to familiar topics, making for an engaging read

Allyson McOuat uses '80s and '90s pop culture to explore her identity as a queer woman and as a mother in this series of humorous essays. Some essays in 'The Call Is Coming From Inside the House' were stronger than others. Overall, I enjoyed it.

I really enjoyed the tone of this essay collection and the correlations it draws between the female experience and the horror genre. Definitely for fans of In the Dreamhouse by Carmen Maria Machado! The essays are short and well-paced and explore themes such as motherhood, female friendships, queerness and female bodily experiences through the lens of horror and also in relation to horror films. I love this as a concept and I think it’s executed successfully!