This is a book I should have loved more than I did. The character are spot on, from Leo, and his half-Indian friends neither fitting in one world or another, to Hana Swan and Keven Seven, not quite villains, but harbingers evil.

The town this book is set in a remote Canadian town in British Columbia, surviving off of Lumber and Mining, but thriving on neither. The high schoolers are stuck between worlds, needing to work just to survive, but with no opportunities. Add in missing women, women who walk home at night after work, but never arrive.

I found the writing competent, but at times disjointed. The three pieces of missing women, the downfall of the local crime boss, and than what happens at the hotel, are connected, but its a bit disjointed, not always clear on what is happening. Hana Swan and Keven Seven are never really explained, nor is their role in all this.

I think the elements are important, but in this story, they are too jumbled.

One thing, there is a sentence about how the res kids drink any alcohol they can find, but they do it because nothing better will happen. This is a thought that is eye-opening to those who have a future to look forward to. ( )

The NY Times Book Review concluded "This novel is a mesmerizing incantation, harrowing and hypnotic." I have to disagree. While I think Harun's descriptive prose is excellent, even poetic at times, I did not connect with the characters and had trouble remembering all of them. Based on British Columbia's infamous Highway of Tears, where natives disappear without a trace, the book's strength is its depiction of local life; however, much of it seems senseless to me, somewhat like McCarthy's Blood Meridian or Cash's A Land More Kind Than Home. 2.5 stars. ( )

All the descriptions of this say it's beautiful, and I guess it is, but what it mostly is is a sensitively-written depiction of people whose lives were never going to be good but which didn't have to be this bad. It's rough going, tragic even (especially) when exciting, and the places where things don't get entirely explained are just the right places to leave empty. ( )

A Man Came Out a Door in the Mountain is a story about a group of young people in a poverty stricken mountain town in British Columbia, near a real-life infamous strip of highway where a number of Native women have disappeared while hitch hiking. The story centers on Leo and his group of friends who are trying to get by in a place that’s rife with corruption, violence, broken homes and broken people. The town is under the influence of evil and benevolent forces in the form of the trickster Kevin Seven, who mesmerizes Leo’s friend Ursi with his card tricks, the beguiling Hanna Swan, who lures away the unwary, a corrupt local kingpin, and Leo’s benevolent but dying Uncle Lud, a wiseman and keeper of stories and traditions. Another strong influence on Leo is Leila Chen, his online physics teacher and amateur philosopher, who goes well above her job description and seems to have an uncanny connection with Leo. The story is beautifully written and interspersed with mythology and poetry. The characters are very realistic, full of flaws but good at heart, and the author does a great job laying out those ties of family and community that they turn to in crisis and that ultimately bring salvation. The book moves along at good pace with a subtle sense of foreboding and I was finished before I knew it. This is a book that requires focus and concentration. I found I had a hard time following it if there were distractions like TV or radio playing, and I feel like I did miss some connections in the story line, but it’s certainly not a book I would mind picking up and reading through again. Put in the effort and you will be rewarded. ( )

A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain by Adrianne Harun is a gratifying, atmospheric debut novel that is highly recommended.

"That wasn’t the first summer girls went missing off the Highway, not the first time a family lost its dearest member to untraceable evil, but it was the first time someone I loved was among that number—spirited away, it seemed, although I knew better." Leo Kreutzer is the narrator in Harun's novel about five friends, all seventeen, who meet the devil in earthly forms during one hot dry summer in a small British Columbia logging town. Girls have been going missing along the highway for years but during this summer the five friends may actually meet the prince of lies and his handmaiden.

"The five of us—Jackie; Bryan; Bryan’s sister, Ursie; Tessa; and me—had been oddball friends since swaddling days, and as soon as we started school, that friendship had been cemented. Part Kitselas, part Haisla, part Polish and German, Ursie, Bryan, and me fit with neither the white nor the Indian kids, who spurned us in different ways. But Jackie, who held her whole generous nation in her blood, adopted us..." (Location 106)

While the five friends try to find a diversion from their bleak lives by shooting at the town dump together, they know their lives are rife with prejudice, poverty, drug abuse, and alcoholism. They were hardly prepared for the mysterious arrival in town and in their lives of Hana Swann and Kevin Seven, and the evil they set into motion. Although it could be easily argued that evil was already in their town with the violent drug dealing Nagel brothers and Gerald Flacker.

"Revenge, resentment—a kind of low-level heat that burned constantly within us, tamped down by the silence we knew would be our only protection until we couldn’t stand it anymore and the flames burst through. We had seen that happen to others and wondered when it would happen to us, break us wide open so that we would be set free or singed beyond repair. Jackie would be the first, the rest of us were sure. She was tough and stoic, but beneath it, her sense of fairness was acute, and her pain at every injustice became harder and harder to hide."(Location 156)

While telling the story of that fateful summer, Leo also shares folk stories his dying uncle Jud has told him, which he has written down in notebooks. His uncle's stories are central to the plot and illustrate/illuminate the narrative, giving the action a sense of timelessness as old as evil itself. But everyone has a story, as Leo's tale unfolds we know this, only as Leo points out, "Almost everybody who shows up here has a story, usually embellished and smoothed out. That’s one big difference right off between those who arrive and those who live here. Our own stories were unedited—sprawling and unpretty—and nothing could clip and shape and redefine them as long as we stayed here." (Location 199)

We know that something bad is going to happen, as Leo foreshadows, "I guess we both must have known then that trouble was not on its way; it was already here. Although how could we have known how many forms that trouble would take?"(Location 358) And that is the crux of the question: exactly what form is the evil going to take and who is going to be harmed?

A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain is poetic and full of magic realism along with supernatural stories and a mythology of its own. All these elements intertwine and weave together to form a truly memorable debut novel. The title is taken from one of the stories told to Leo by Uncle Jud.

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of Penguin Books via Netgalley for review purposes.


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