It is perhaps unfair and a little inaccurate to typecast The Other as a horror story. It is so ingenious and well-written that it transcends that—or any—label. The setting is the small Connecticut town of Pequot Landing, which under other circumstances, might be idyllic. But the people who inhabit Tryon’s New England are just as haunted as O’Neill’s, and a lot more violent… [Tryon’s] characterizations have depth and subtlety, the narrative is well-paced and suspenseful. Where he really excels is with mood and atmosphere. Rarely have such commonplace surroundings been made to seem quite so dark and menacing and chillingly evil.
—Chicago Tribune
A lyrical, impressive horror story that is a cross between The Bad Seed and John Cheever’s The Wapshot Chronicles.
—Los Angeles Times
This first novel from Thomas Tryon is a distinguished one, it may well leave you blenched with horror, but it is beautifully, even poetically, wrought, and within its boundaries there would seem an actual divination into the spirit of murderous insanity….In due time The Other will doubtless become one of the classics of horror tales, comparable to The Turn of the Screw.
—Dorothy B. Hughes, Los Angeles Times
Like most professional writers, I resent Tom Tryon’s The Other, since Tryon should get on with the job of being a good actor and not write good books as well. Enough is enough already. The Other is a highly readable chiller.
— Anthony Burgess
If you're looking for a good scary book to enjoy this Halloween, here is a suggestion: The Other by Thomas Tryon. The 1971 horror classic is a tale of a seemingly bucolic farmhouse in a small Connecticut town in the 1930s. There are no vampires in the story, no ghosts, no swamp monsters or ghouls or zombies or witches. There are two little boys, twins Niles and Holland, the picture of innocence. Or so it seems. The story is told in the voice of one of the boys, now older and a resident of a sanitarium. Insanity, it seems, is a family inheritance, and insanity is at the core of the chilling story that slowly unfolds and culminates in some horrifying deaths.
—Advocate (Baton Rouge)
Truly extraordinary! One of those books over which everybody will take leave their senses, all seven of them…
—Kirkus
A smashing suspense-horror novel.
—Minneapolis Tribune
A humdinger…A whirlpool of Oh-My-God horror. Please congratulate Mr. Tryon for me. What a marvelous job he’s done.
—Ira Levin, author of Rosemary’s Baby
Tryon succeeds in creating a story that cast a subtly savage spell.
—Saturday Review
The Other is an all-out war on reality.
—Chicago Sun-Times
The most memorable chiller-thriller to come along since Rosemary’s Baby….A tale of evil obsession with surprises and shockers.
–Hartford Courant
Thomas Tryon has unfolded a horror story of supreme proportions.
—Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
A psychological thriller that you read a second time to see how the author did it.
—Cleveland Plain Dealer
Thomas Tryon’s The Other will scare the hell right out of you….You’re almost afraid to turn the next page.
–Rocky Mountain News
