‘Home School’ Review: A Frightening, Propulsive Horror Fiction Debut

I remember my first Hell House, and no, not the Stephen Cognetti kind (honestly, that’d have been preferable). This Hell House was the kind where my church had me wander through graveyards of aborted babies crying out in pain. The kind where I saw actors writhing on the ground as the charred corpses of gay men and women. The kind where sheets wailed to symbolize unbaptized babies perennially stuck in Limbo. Without having to say anything aloud, it was the kind of haunted house that stuck with me and impressed upon me the righteousness of living a good life, lest I be damned for eternity, too.

I eventually left the church, luckily. My Mom, forever a real one, was not about that excursion. Yet, the roots of religious trauma run deep, especially among the young, and it’s the vein of vulnerability and uncertainty that Casey Giltner culls most of the terror from in Home School, his debut horror novel. It’s a riotous yet deeply unsettling read, a slow descent into religious psychosis whose earth-shattering (literally) finale is both cathartic and damning. I couldn’t put it down.

Mira and her mother just click. They’re two peas in a pod. Giltner opens with one of their regular mountain-biking trips, narrating mom through the Christopher Nolan Dead Wife lens – you just know something bad is going to happen. Something bad does happen, and 14-year-old Mira is shipped off to live with her estranged aunt to start a new life.

Giltner’s horror is of the slow-drip variety, almost akin to a rich French press that delights the longer it steeps. Aunt Vivian, at first both compassionate and mindful of Mira’s bereavement, slowly morphs into something more abstract and sinister, and Giltner wisely avoids devolving into melodrama too much, too soon. Aunt Vivian, a devoutly religious woman, ostensibly makes every effort to acclimate Mira to her new life, though the obstacles appear too inconvenient until she concedes to keeping Mira at home for a rigorous homeschool curriculum (hence the title).

While there, Vivian culls her lessons from Texas… err, her own Catholic-adjacent virtues, starting reasonably enough until Mira’s lessons include considerably more about the Tetrads, her sect, and their twelve tenets. There’s talk of a divine prophecy, Mira’s “special nature,” and a curious trap door in the church storage closet. Mira is additionally barred from going outside, indulging in extracurriculars, or even maintaining her vegan diet.