The House in the Pines

Maya’s quest to unlock her missing and altered memories is key to solving the mystery of Aubrey’s death. Maya holds the answers inside her, but Frank’s hypnosis has kept them buried in her mind. The House in the Pines explores the construction and reconstruction of Maya’s memory—how Frank’s manipulations falsely shape what Maya thinks happened leading up to Aubrey’s death, and how Maya recovers the reality. The novel mimics this plot element structurally, with chapters moving back and forth between Maya’s present search for answers and her past in the summer Frank killed Aubrey.

Memories are subjective. They are essentially stories we tell about certain events; the narrative can change over time, especially with frequent repetition or with suggestions from other people and sources. Memories are not facts; instead, they are based on our recall of events, which often incorporates other people’s descriptions, false details that plant themselves, and subsequent reflections. When we remember, we are actually reconstructing events from our present, now viewing all of our subconscious edits, additions, and modification to memory as factual.

In the novel, Frank deliberately alters Maya’s memories through hypnosis, leaving gaps in her memories that don’t make sense. Maya’s memories are also shaped by her self-doubt and her fear of others’ disbelief. Dr. Barry blames Maya’s accusations about Frank on “magical thinking,” and tricks of the imagination—seeing patterns that aren’t really there. In lieu of any other rational explanation, Maya comes to accept Dr. Barry’s assessment as the truth. Maya’s unstable perception leaves readers in a similar state of uncertainty about what’s real in the novel.

The novel’s structure emphasizes Maya’s construction and reconstruction of memory. Grief over Aubrey’s death divides Maya’s life “into a Before and an After” (20). In keeping with this psychological effect, the narrative follows two interwoven time frames, which represent this divide: Maya’s summer before college and her visit to Pittsfield to solve Aubrey’s death seven years later. Reyes plays with stylistic expectations, writing the past in the present tense (“Maya drives with the windows down” [43]), and the present in the past tense (“Maya woke with a shrieking headache and a sour, leathery tongue” [48]). This grammatical oddness underscores Maya’s cognitive crisis: At 17, Maya was happy and present in her day-to-day life, while at 25, Maya is stuck in her past, coping with trauma and Klonopin withdrawal, and mentally more distant. The change in tense also emphasizes the process of memory. The present tense shows the original construction of Maya’s memories at 17. At 25, Maya looks back to rebuild her memories to make sense of Cristina and Aubrey’s deaths.

The shifting reaches its climax at the dramatic turning point when Maya unlocks her buried knowledge that Frank’s cabin doesn’t truly exist. Chapter 26 explores Maya’s first visit to Frank’s cabin at 17. First, readers experience the edited memory Frank has planted in her mind. Then, in Chapter 30, readers see the full reconstruction of this same memory as Maya unlocks the truth of what happened. Watching Frank’s manipulation happen makes the violation all the more horrifying.

Maya’s mental health and substance use disorder make her an unreliable narrator, building suspense by questioning if Maya’s experiences are real. Her character arc speaks to larger themes of gender-based trauma and society’s discrediting of women’s experiences. The House in the Pines explores Maya’s recovery from Frank’s psychological abuse, considering why and how society blames mental illness for the mistreatment she and other women in the story report.

Maya’s questionable mental state is established early in the novel. Maya is introduced as prone to delusions and magical thinking, with a family history of mental illness. She is haunted by dreams of Frank’s cabin and thoughts that he wants to kill her—thoughts she keeps at bay with Klonopin, drugs, and alcohol. Readers wonder whether Maya’s search for answers about Frank is simply a mental health crisis from Klonopin withdrawal, with hallucinations and intoxication fueling the patterns Maya sees as evidence. Even Maya frequently questions her own perception of reality, having been told by doctors and her mother that her thoughts are from a psychiatric disorder brought on by grief.

The novel offers a critique of psychiatric treatment of women’s mental health by identifying the true culprits behind Maya’s self-doubt. Though Maya experiments with alcohol and drugs in high school, her paranoia is the direct result of Frank’s abuse and society’s invalidation of her experience. Frank’s manipulation is a form of gender-based violence—Frank, an older man with social and financial power, preys on younger, vulnerable women, including Maya, Aubrey, possibly Ruby, and Cristina. While readers never witness Frank force Maya into sex while under hypnosis, sexual undertones in their exchanges highlight that he could have easily done so. Under hypnosis, Maya suddenly goes from anger to sexual interest: “When she feels his hand on her shoulder, she thinks that he will lead her to the bed. And that she will go” (195). Meanwhile, Maya has limited agency over her body: “Her hand is strangely hard to lift, so he catches it for her” (194). As Frank manipulates Maya’s mind, he claims power over her body and sexuality; he continues the pattern of abuse started by his father, who abused Frank’s mother and Frank, leading to Frank’s mother being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

When Maya comes forward with accusations against Frank, a male detective sides with Frank’s version of the story and warns Maya against “false accusations” since “she could ruin a man’s life that way” (21). The emphasis on women lying about men’s behavior references to real-world dismissals of women’s reports of male abuse and sexual violence (it is an often-used strategy for the defense in rape trials, for example). The role of hypnosis adds further drama to this exchange, as Maya lacks evidence or a rational explanation to prove Frank’s abuse. In response, society blames her experiences on a mental health condition and a doctor prescribes the heavy sedative Klonopin—a dismissal that hearkens to 19th-century catch-all diagnoses of “hysteria” (See: Background). All the while, Maya is denied the support she truly needs—the validation of her experiences; she develops a substance use disorder to escape what she comes to believe are just anxious thoughts. Maya avoids thinking about the events of that summer, leading to unprocessed trauma, growing addiction, and disconnection from her reality and identity.

Maya’s recovery from Klonopin addiction gives her the clarity to pursue answers. The truth about the summer Aubrey died allows Maya to finally process her trauma and find closure. Interestingly, however, the novel still makes it important to Maya to find real evidence to prove her side of the story—without a recording of Frank’s confession, her narrative would still not be believed the way Frank’s was.