A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain by Adrianne Harun

Today is a short post as this was a weird one I still can't figure out how to sum up my thoughts on.

Leo Kreutzer and his friends know that Native girls have been going missing in their area for some time. But for these recently graduated young adults, it's a reality that hasn't quite touched them. Until now. A stranger has turned up at the local motel and another at the mining camp. What follows is twenty-four hours of havoc with Leo and his friends caught in the middle. 

A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is a truly bizarre book! It kicks off with hints of mystery, magical realism, and folklore and soon dives into physics and poetry. I'm not kidding. There's really a lot going on in what is a fairly short little book. One thing that's present throughout, however, is Adrianne Harun's hypnotic style.

Leo, our narrator, is a fabulous character. He's of mixed European and Indian heritage and has a live in uncle who collects stories. And it's his uncle's stories that are interspersed between the main narrative. Stories of the devil and his companion and warnings about how to avoid them.

And at the heart of the book is a revenge plot, one that's prompted by the strangers and puts Leo's little group in grave danger.

I could say that I wish the book had a more straightforward narrative. I could also say that I wanted more of Leo's stories. I could even point out that there seemed to be pieces of the story missing as a whole. It's all true, but above all I only really wish that the book had been longer! Yes, it's odd and yes, it's really hard to describe, but overall it was completely enthralling.