This is a curious novel, one that I think is worth reading and rereading and perhaps in search of a better audience than me. We meet Molly, an paleonbotanist working on a dig. At the dig several objects, decidedly from various distinct time periods (in that their very existence suggests a time origin) appear too well within the dig to indicate pretty much anything other than bizarre phenomenon. In addition to this, she’s a mother of two children and is happening perhaps visions, perhaps delusions, and perhaps occurrences of intruders in her household to which she responds with intense interest and bemusement more than fear and terror.
This is not a thriller in that sense, and so the tags on Goodreads as such will send readers down the wrong path. Nor is this book exactly literary thriller either. It’s more of a kind of existential horror, as well as one that uses abstraction and metaphor to effectively build suspense. This is a book so abstract in its images as to almost border on impressionism (but it’s also not impressionism). Instead it’s like looking at a horror movie through a film of trauma, instead of fear. So the everyday objects and occurrences seems almost as within a fog. Borders are seen and experienced, but the shapes remain fuzzy. And in being unable to discern clear identity and contrast, the world becomes somewhat more and more fragmented.
This most reminds me of a novel (though still short) length version of “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
(Photo: https://www.amazon.com/Need-Helen-Phillips/dp/1982113162/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+need&qid=1564741543&s=gateway&sr=8-1)