The Spirit House ventures into the littleknown territory of Thai spirituality to create its suspenseful story. This quality of intellectual exploration adds greatly to the novel's fresh interest, since even avid readers of supernatural thrillers are not likely to be familiar with Thai cultural traditions.

Sleator allows his narrator Julie to present with nonjudgmental forthrightness the Thai traditional concepts of spirit houses and the spirits that live in them. The fascinated reader learns that land has spirits, and those who build on the land must provide a small house for the spirit of the land to live in. The spirit domicile must be separate from the main house and the shadow of the main house must never fall on it. The spirit has a female head from which dangle entrails; it is demanding and can do people either good or harm. It likes gifts enough that...