THE UNKNOWN, by Riley Sager
Riley Sager’s new horror novel, “The Unknown,” is animated by an unsolved mystery that has become a local legend, mythologized over the past 100 years. If you live in a certain corner of Vermont, you’ve heard the whispers: witchcraft, supernatural forces or something even more malevolent.
For decades the island of New Avalon was home to Ruth Hume Semple — the only daughter of a wealthy industrialist — and her guests, a rotating cast of women with, as the story goes, paranormal abilities. One day, in 1926, they all just disappear. No bodies found; no foul play detected. Horrifyingly, all that was left behind were five dresses swinging from the branches of a massive oak tree and the detailed diary of Daisy Rue, one of Mrs. Semple’s gifted guests.
A century later, the wunderkind director Ronan Peters is working on a buzzy new project: a screen adaptation of Daisy’s diary. Among the five women cast are the legendary actress Violet Wright, to play Mrs. Semple, and a newcomer, Marin Keane, to star as Daisy.
Before filming can begin, though, Ronan stages a controversial stunt to immerse his actresses in the story. The cast will spend a week on New Avalon, living as closely as possible to the way the women they will be portraying would have lived. That means no cellphones, clothes modeled from the very dresses found in the oak tree and, of course, regular séances.
Within hours, the cast is confronted with chaos, both earthly and otherworldly: jealousy between the ambitious actors and inexplicable phenomena that are all but directly pulled from the pages of their script.
Defined by the full-throated plot twists that Sager has become known for, “The Unknown” uses the increasingly popular “cursed movie” subgenre to begin conversations about trauma, womanhood and the corrupting cost of fame.
Successfully, Sager never really provides stable ground for reader or character — certainty is always just out of reach. Even the diary entries from 1926, initially presented as an almost biblical source of truth, are not entirely what they seem.
The result is a novel that is atmospheric — just like the actors, Sager’s readers will be unnerved and unsettled — but that comes at the cost of meaningful character investment.
Marin, who functions as something between a final girl and a self-proclaimed “gullible witness,” exists more as a plot device than a memorable heroine. She’s driven by a family tragedy and a desire “to be known” as an actress, but everything sort of just happens to her. When she finally does confront her trauma, it feels less like a revelation and more like a segue.
“The Unknown,” a milestone 10th novel for Sager, is written in homage to his previous work. Replete with references to earlier books, this is Sager’s “Eras Tour.” For Sager fans, spotting the nods will surely be half the fun. If this novel is your first foray into Sager’s literary world, as it was for this reviewer, prepare for a nagging sense that you’re on the outside of a joke. For better and for worse, “The Unknown” has one audience in mind: Sager loyalists.
It feels paradoxical to want more from “The Unknown,” when Sager has attempted so much. And yet amid switchback plot twists, supernatural forces, an ensemble cast, jabs at Hollywood and direct winks for his dedicated readers, I kept waiting for fun. Heavy with a more-is-more storytelling approach and an absence of truly compelling characters, “The Unknown” reads as little more than a victory lap for Sager.
THE UNKNOWN | By Riley Sager | Dutton | 353 pp. | $32
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