Review by Ian Keogh
The Nice House on the Lake Volume 1 was a story so beautifully accomplished in establishing a cast and setting up a compelling mystery with stunning art that it’s difficult to imagine how it might have been better. We now reach the concluding six chapters.
Eleven people have survived the end of the world in idyllic surroundings, their connection being that they were all friends of Walter at some point over the previous twenty years. Except Walter isn’t who they assumed. They’ve been classified according to trade, are supplied with anything they ask for, and cannot die. Flashes forward, though, have shown a different, damaged world as people take their turns in narrating events.
James Tynion IV established a turning point in the previous volume’s final chapter, revealing to readers truths wiped from the memories of the cast. In the present day they’ve been trapped together for around a month, and they’re coping or not coping in different ways from festering resentment to attempting to figure a way out. As the sample art shows, there’s also an upside. Defining a large cast isn’t simple, and the character notes reprinted in the Deluxe Edition combining both volumes provide a glimpse behind the curtain, yet Tynion’s blending of past and present is immensely skilful in providing comprehensive understanding.
That also develops from the art. Álvaro Martínez Bueno’s graphic design sensibilities present well formulated people in considered poses given varied expressions. Walter remains partially hidden via reflective glasses, but we know them anyway, yet his true form proves the anomalous aspect of otherwise straightforward art, and all the more startling for that whenever we see him. Bueno continues to design eye-catching modernist structures as the compound grows, and the colouring of Jordie Bellaire adds inordinately to the appeal of the art.
Walter remains key to everything, and it takes a while to realise that changes ending the previous book were more comprehensive than first assumed, with Walter now living among the cast. Tynion continues to build the present from the past, Walter’s comments heavy with meaning not realised at the time, and halfway through we’re shown the how the changes occurred allowing for the state of people during the flash forwards. The immediate result is brilliantly conceived and horrific.
Confining a limited number of people within a limited space is a narrative device that’s worked to reveal them from Macbeth to Friends and beyond. Once they’re established Tynion pulls the lever beginning the endgame. The wheels spin, the options are laid out and human nature takes its course. Tynion has one final bomb to drop, and that leads into The Nice House by the Sea, but this is a complete story with a start, middle and finish, and one to have you thinking long after the final page is turned. What would you do given the same set of options? Masterful.
