July 17, 2023
Fussner’s debut combines quotidian interpersonal dilemmas with an edge of the uncanny—just enough to pep up the action when mundane friction between characters wears thin. The ensemble cast is loosely arranged around three couples: Eve and Ryan Hawthorne, whose newlywed home is allegedly haunted; Sandra, producer of a reality TV show about ghost hunting, and Alan, the paranormal investigator she brings in to provide a veneer of authenticity for her scripts; and perky Caitlin and staid Charles, adolescent ghost enthusiasts who constitute Alan’s “team.” The first third of the book sets up the couples, mixing third-person narrative from shifting perspectives with transcripts of the day’s filming. The women in particular stake out the story’s emotional territory. Eve is resentful at having left the New York art world behind to settle in Pennsylvania because of her husband’s business. Sandra is bored with her job and crushing on Alan. Caitlin is reckless in her desire to prove the spooks are real. While bumps in the night do eventually manifest, the novel’s primary concern is mapping these territories and their overlaps. The result is highly readable and never really scary, ideal for nonhorror fans who still want some spooky season reading. Agent: Aimee Ashcraft, Brower Literary.
July 28, 2023
Fussner's debut is a horror novel about three women all working on a ghost-hunting TV show. Sandra, the show's producer, is unhappy with her job. Caitlin, a teenage ghost hunter, wants desperately to find harmony with humanity and the other side. And Eve, struggling with her marriage and her art, creates a whirling storm of desperation fraught with her untapped potential and her want of more that affects everyone on set. Each woman needs a different sort of satisfaction--understanding external forces that shape one's life, acceptance and belief in the face of the paranormal, a better understanding of decisions that forge life's path--and Fussner does a deft job of writing three extremely different, well-rounded women whose desires clash with their significant others and one another. She knows how to balance the incredibly scripted, predictable nature of the TV show with the more traditional aspects of the horror genre, which makes Invisible World a unique and outstanding novel.
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Starred review from August 11, 2023
DEBUT Fussner's debut novel pulls readers in behind the scenes of a ghost-hunting reality show and its cast of characters through the lens of cameras, recorders, interviews, and potentially unreliable narrators. As the plot unfolds, the characters discover that they are more likely haunted by their own failures, not a ghost in the basement. But then again, there are inexplicable things happening on- and off-set surrounding the film crew, the paranormal investigators, and the hosts of the supposedly haunted house. At the center of the haunting are two women searching for answers: Sandra, the show's reluctant producer, and Eve, the overeager subject of the episode. Their individual truths--and the truths of those around them--leach into the plot through partial transcripts of interviews and first-person observations that take readers down a winding road of trauma, time slips, hallucinations, and personal revelations. Fussner has polished the jagged edges of the typical haunted-house novel through subtlety and sleight of hand, making its composition all the more unsettling for the audience. VERDICT Akin to Jac Jemc's The Grip of It but unlike any ghost-hunting novels before it, this is a masterpiece of innovative storytelling and psychological horror.--Alana Quarles
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