Strange Houses by Uketsu

     I have to admit, until a few hours ago I was completely unfamiliar with Uketsu. I will provide some brief context here, before getting to the book review. 

    Uketsu is a Japanese man who creates bizarre horror-themed Youtube videos, and now, novels. His identity remains a mystery, as he is only ever seen wearing a strange white mask. The mask reminds me of one of the characters from Twin Peaks, the so-called Jumping Man. The Jumping Man is a Black Lodge spirit, and as enigmatic as they come. But this post isn't about Twin Peaks.

    Strange Houses is Uketsu's first novel. It was published in Japanese in 2021, and in an English translation in 2025. In that same year, the sequel entitled Strange Pictures was published in English, having been released in Japan in 2022. There is a third novel in this sequence called Strange Buildings, published in Japan in 2024 and in the US earlier this year, while the fourth novel, Strange Maps, has been out for a year in Japan but currently has no English translation. 

    Strange Houses is about an investigation into a house whose floor plan features a few oddities. This house is discovered by a friend of the initially unnamed narrator, who sends it to him because the friend has noticed a strange void space in between two of the rooms on the floor plan. The narrator, who is identified in the epilogue as Uketsu, then sends the floor plan along to a friend of his, Kurihara, who is an architect and thus might be better situated to understanding why something like this would exist.

    Rather than providing an answer though, Kurihara comes back with more strangeness. Not only is the void space seemingly intentionally built into the property, but he also points out the strange, prison-cell-esque upstairs bedroom which was where the previous occupants kept their child. 

    But it's only when the two stories' floor plans are laid atop one another and the true nature of the seeming void space is revealed that this story begins to really take off. As the mystery begins to unfold, secrets are exposed, and the reader is left wondering who, if anyone, can truly be trusted.

    I found the style of this book to be a little off-putting at first, but eventually grew to appreciate the benefits of its unique structure. The story is told through conventional narrative, but between those portions the author uses play-style dialogue, formatting, and of course the above-mentioned house floor plan diagrams to convey the narrative. Once I got used to this distinctive blend of styles, I found it quite readable and actually enjoyed how it broke up the page in a new manner. 

    I read this book in one sitting, and I think two factors contributed to my voracity. The first of these was the fact that, having grown up on early internet 'mystery stories' like Ted the Caver and Dionaea House and later in life devouring House of Leaves, it would be safe to say that I love a weird mystery. This one, with strange house plans and dead bodies, was very much up my alley. 

    The other reason is to do with the stylistic choices I mentioned above. Reading this book, one is struck by the surprising amount of white space on some pages. This is, I think, due to the necessary rendering of the large number of images on various pages, but whatever the reason, I think it makes the book read a lot more quickly.

    The story was good, and the plot did a good job of pulling me along, but initially I did think it was a bit thin, lacking in emotional resonance. That changed about three-quarters of the way in, and without spoiling anything, the story of weird murders is humanized and given a tremendous amount of pathos in a really neat way. 

    Overall, I thought this book was a really interesting mystery/thriller and I look forward to reading the other three entries in this series. 

Jersey Genealogy

 Just putting this here so it doesn't get lost:

  Louis Courtel (b. ~1846, ?France - d. after 1911) m. Mary Ann Elizabeth du Feu* (b. 6 February 1848, St Ouen, Jersey) 10 Jul 1870 St Ouen Jersey
-Anna Mary Courtel (b. 25 Jan 1871, St Peter Jersey)[bap. 25 Feb 1871]
(d. 4 Apr 1871, poss. buried at Parish Church St Peter, Jersey)
-Mary Ann Courtel (b. 21 Nov 1877, St Peter Jersey)[bap. 16 Dec 1877]
-Florence Courtel (b.13 Apr 1881, St Brelade Jersey)[bap. 17 Apr '81]
-Ada Annie Courtel (b.9 Mar 1883, St Brelade Jersey)[bap. 25 Mar '83]
-Anna Mary Courtel (b.17 Jan 1885, St Brelade Jersey)[bap. 30 Jan '85]
-Walter Lewis Courtel (b.4 Oct 1886, St Brel Jersey)[bap. 6 Oct '86]
(d. 18 Oct. 1886 St Brelade, Jersey, aged 15 days)


Anna Mary Courtel (b. 1885) m. Michael Joseph Lysaght (Ireland) in New York at some time prior to 1921, and probably c. 1910s. Was still in Jersey in the 1901 Census, which makes sense since she was still quite young.
-Thomas Patrick Lysaght
-Eileen Lysaght
-John Francis Lysaght (b. 12 May 1921, Bronx NYC) m. Helen Kelly
--Michael Joseph Lysaght (b. 1955 St Cath., ON, CA)
--Leslie Carolyn Lysaght (b. 29 Mar 1958 St Cath.)
--Brian Kelly Lysaght (b. 1961 St Cath.)


Questions:
*Where and when was Louis Courtel born? Check census of France, held every five years from 1791. Check 1851, 1856
-Probably from Côtes-d'Armor department, check their censuses first.
-Possibly also from Manche or Ille-et-Vilaine.
-Potentially from Saint-Brice, Mayenne (1911 census)


*When and where did Anna Courtel leave Jersey?
-Had to be before 1920s, because Grandpa Jack born 1921 in NYC.
-Did she travel to Montreal initially? How did she come to be in New York? How did she meet l'Irlandais?

Writing Diary 2026 #3 (January 7th)

 Well, it's been a few days. Not much progress has been made. I think I'm starting over yet again. I have another idea, I have renewed hope for motivation, etc. I also made a new website over the past couple days, but it's still barebones. It may stay that way forever, who knows. That's at www.1800newgods.com if you want to check it out. If you get the reference, email me. Okay bye.

Writing Diary 2026 #2 (January 3rd)

 Last night I tried writing a new story's beginning. 500 words in, I'm not sure if it'll go anywhere, but I think I'm a little more interested in the potential here than I was for the first thing I wrote. Of course, that means I'm 500 words behind my goal. That's OK. 

I joined an online writing goal on a site called Trackbear, which allows groups of people to self-report their progress over a period of time and charts it on a big graph. That's fun. Again, we will see if it lasts. 

I also watched the premiere episode of season 18 of RuPaul's Drag Race last night. It was pretty good, I thought. The guest judge was Cardi B, who I found to be quite charming. In any event, that's all I have to say. See, I told you these would be short!  

Writing Diary 2026 #1 (December 31st 2025 - January 2nd 2026)

 I took a train back to the city on New Year's Eve. It was an Amtrak, which is the closest we come in America to genuine commuter rail. It was a four hour journey, give or take 30 minutes, which was bearable, until a random child sat next to me for the last hour. I didn't love that. Also I was running on about 3.5 hours of sleep. When the train arrived at Union Station (incidentally, I'd like to write a collection of short stories called Union Station, where all the stories meet at one point or another. Like a union station. It's basically a metaphor) I got to experience my favorite thing, which is walking up the narrow walkway between the train platforms and into the station proper. It feels like a remnant of the 19th Century, in a way that I find thrilling. 

I knew I was supposed to take the Brown Line north to the station nearest my apartment, but when I got to the platform, I saw only an Orange Line train. Luckily, I heard the robot announcer voice say "This is a Brown Line train to Kimball" and managed to jump on right before the doors closed. Apparently during weekdays, the CTA runs one Orange Line train backwards to act as an extra Brown Line train, to help address the increased demand of commuters. I'm still learning all the train lines so that's basically meaningless to me, but apparently it helps. 

Once I got home I said hi to one of my roommates who was watching the new Stranger Things in the living room, then I went to my bedroom and passed out. I woke up around six hours later, feeling marginally less tired, and got ready to go out for the holiday. 

Anyway, enough moment-by-moment. This is meant to be a writing journal.

I wrote 500 words of a story on the train on the 31st, assuming (correctly, as it turned out) that I would be too hungover to do much of anything on January 1st. The only problem is, I don't really like that story. Thinking about it, I can't find that one spark of excitement in the story that will drive me over the next few months to keep coming back to it. So I think a new story is needed. 

Elements I would like the new story to contain include:

• A mystery, preferably supernatural in nature.
• Some element of magic/manipulation of the world that the main character can learn the rudiments of.
• An old town where things are not quite as they seem. 

 And more than that, but those are the things off the top of my head that tend to keep me interested in stories. So I will try again, and try writing 1000 words today. Maybe I'll try non-linear writing, and write scenes as they occur to me. I've read about that method quite a lot. 

Anyway. That's enough blogging for one day. I'll try to update this site every few days with a summary of my progress. It might not happen though. 

The Light on the Stairs

 

He stopped, transfixed, on the stairs. Something about the window- the way the light cascaded through its multicolored panels and pooled at his feet on the carpet staircase had caught his attention this morning that hadn’t been there before. No, it must’ve been there the whole time- it was just that he hadn’t seen it until this morning. Green, red, yellow, blue, and purple light spread itself into a divine tapestry and here he was standing right in the middle of it, totally unaware of its existence. How could he have been so blind?

And then, when the blame crept into his mind, it held the door open for its good friend and companion, worry, to follow behind. And he thought, oh God. What if this has ruined the world for me? What if my eyes are cursed to judge all that they see by this impossible rubric? For truly, he had known as soon as he set eyes upon the masterpiece that nothing could possibly compare to it. And at this thought, this realization, he despaired.

Because this is what the Romantics got wrong. There is such a thing as absolute beauty, and once it has been seen (if the near-ecstatic experience he had just undergone/was undergoing/would in the future undergo could be summed up as simply as that vulgar, base word seeing) it cannot be forgotten. And there is nothing that can compare. It saps the rose of its red blush, it steals from the ocean its cerulean gems. He who has gazed upon it can do naught but curse god and die.

So, standing there on the first floor landing of his sumptuously carpeted stairs, he despaired. What flashed before his blighted (blessed) eyes was not a sequence of memories, but a sequence of plans, of ideas, of hopes, of aspirations. Of all the things which he had planned to do on that useful abstraction one day or its close corollary someday soon. To marry. To own land. To retire. To love, and to be loved in return.

And always before his eyes was the light, that impossible inevitability which danced over his unsocked feet. It rose as he watched it, so that it seemed to encompass the whole of the landing, then the entire stairway, then his vision of the home was replaced by the light, and it shook and vibrated and heaved before him, and grew- how was this possible- more intense, more dazzling, more colorful. Larger and still larger, until it seemed that all that was, was the light, and that which was not the light, was not. Greater and still greater, brighter and still brighter, always with that quality of impossible beauty.

The colors began to expand into each other now, and before his eyes, red into green leaving yellow, until all merged (beginning at the edges and cascading inward like a whitecap) into purest, brilliant white light. It grew brighter then, and burned hotter, until it seemed that he would surely be burned up, or blinded, or both. Then, just when the end seemed impossible to avert, the white before his eyes became darkest, pitch black and he felt his body collapse.

On The Daughters of Tiriel

    Tiriel, the first of William Blake's Prophetic Books, is a work filled with anxieties of abandonment, tyranny, and the absence of filial piety. It narrates the sad, if deserved, fate of the eponymous king, now aged and widowed, as he seeks revenge against those he feels to have wronged him (principally his own children).

    "The cry was great in Tiriel's palace his five daughters ran/And caught him by the garments weeping with cries of bitter woe...Hela my youngest daughter you shall lead me from this place/And let the curse fall on the rest & wrap them up together..."

    Hela, the youngest of the five daughters of Tiriel, is spared the dark fate that befalls her sisters and brothers. But why? Simply so she can accompany her blind father on his final exile, like some Anglo-Saxon Antigone? Or is there something deeper at work here?

    I dunno. But I'm bored of writing this now, so I'm posting it.