Who’s killing off the members of the Usher family?
Or a better question: who wouldn’t kill off the members of the Usher family, given half a chance? They’re a noxious bunch. Martha is not too horrible, but only because age has mellowed her unpleasant qualities. Her daughter Biddy ignores the family, preferring instead to indulge in an extramarital affair. Biddy’s husband Ted, though smart with his financial investments, is hapless as a parent and spouse. Son William can’t be bothered to stay in college, and daughter Amy cares only about herself. The only decent one is Sam, who was adopted, as everyone else resentfully points out at every opportunity.
We first meet this dysfunctional group as they bicker and squawk over Christmas dinner, though they find it difficult to concentrate on their arguments, as the downstairs neighbors are screaming at each other. Only Sam (remember, he’s the good one) sees fit to intervene, but he’s too late: the woman downstairs has killed her abusive husband, then killed herself.
Maybe there’s something in the air, because the Usher family is next. The first victim is Martha. The fall doesn’t kill her—was it an accident?—but it leaves her in a wheelchair, unable to fend for herself. (Sam, unsurprisingly, is the only one willing to care for her.) The next victim does not fare so well, nor the next, nor the next. One by one, the Ushers are dying. Is the house haunted, as Sam suspects? Is a stranger killing off the family? Or is it an inside job?
This is a delightfully nasty little graphic novel. There is physical violence, but more to the point, there is psychological violence: the Ushers are horrible to each other, and it satisfies the baser emotions to see them get knocked off. Artist Antonio Fuso intensifies the frenetic energy of the story with atmospheric black-and-white drawings, depicting graphic violence alongside more subtle whispers of unease and discord. And at the very end, the drawings and the story deliver a wicked plot twist that I, for one, never saw coming.
Check the WRL catalog for A Sickness in the Family
[…] discovered this book on Blogging for a Good Book (run by the Williamsburg Regional Library) and bought it when I was on a “I really need to […]