Book Review — "Bottled" by Stephanie Ellis

I. Love. Novellas.

I don’t know why it took until I started reviewing books to realize that they are in many ways superior to novels. Stephanie Ellis, in fact, confirmed for me that not every story needs to be hundreds of pages long if you know what you’re doing. Perhaps it’s a faux pas to say amongst the literary crowd, but I think I like novellas so much because they are in a sense more cinematic than their thicker and thinner cousins; they’re like screenplays written in prose. The brevity, the sharp attention to detail, the tight dialogue—only muscle and bone, no time for any extraneous tissue.

But before I get to Bottled itself, I must take a moment to express that the cover art is absolutely stellar. Kealan Patrick Burke, you deserve a special shout-out, mon ami. Seriously, I want it on the wall above my desk. Because who needs a window when you’ve got a perfect encapsulation of an entire genre in a single image? Man, I want Burke to draw me like one of his French boys...

Anyway, onward to the story. It’s a set-up we’ve seen before. A man returns to the place of his childhood trauma—in this case, the house of a late grandfather—for closure, and old wounds indubitably reopen as mysterious and horrific things ensue. Now, there’s nothing wrong with a rehash so long as it’s told well. And, for the most part, Bottled is pretty well told. Ellis definitely knows her way around a word processor. She also has a keen awareness for mood and atmosphere.

Unfortunately, her character development leaves much to be desired. It’s hard to get behind Tyler, the protagonist. As a reader, I do not need to like a character in order to follow them or find them interesting. Some of my favorite characters are flawed, troubled, or just plain bad people. But Tyler is kind of boring and pretty two-dimensional. So when awful stuff starts to happen to him, I wasn’t very invested in his wellbeing. He’s also far from being the most intriguing character in the story. That would be the house itself.

This setting—the house, that is—is so elaborate that it deserves to have its rich history acted out dramatically. I wanted to see firsthand how this home grew to be a possessed living organism that thirsts for blood and bone. Ellis eventually gives us the whys of it all—why Tyler has so much apprehension about returning, why he wishes to see the whole thing demolished, etc.—but it’s presented in too much of an outside eye way.

There’s too much tell and not enough show. A lot of the explanatory parts should’ve been played out in actual flashback, instead of as recollective monologues or dream sequences, which seldom work for me as narrative devices. The writing is illustrative, sure, but the final  information dump reminded me of a Bond villain clarifying their complicated scheme. I understand that Ellis probably intended for it all to culminate into some sort of climactic reveal, but offering the backstory sooner may help readers grasp the stakes of the story.

Thankfully, the ending is dark as hell, but not necessarily in a totally original way, either. When I put the pieces together and realized what was to become of our protagonist, I couldn’t help but feel as though I’d seen this episode before. I don’t know if it was The Twilight Zone, or Tales from the Crypt, or maybe even a Treehouse of Horror... but I’m acquainted somehow with this conclusion. The reference to the original The Fly (with a Mysterious Island twist) was unmistakable, though. Nevertheless, I love a grim ending, even if it is suspiciously familiar.

Despite the criticisms I have of Bottled, I still plan to read Stephanie Ellis’ next book. She’s clearly talented and has a penchant for crafting a modern gothic tale. So I can’t wait to uncork whatever her follow-up endeavor contains.