Another book I read because I watched the movie. I didn't think the movie was very good, and now I can see why: not only does the book itself do a poor job of conveying its own points, but it seems like a fool's errand to try and convert it to film, and Guillermo del Toro, as much as I love him, did a poor job on top of all that. 

A dark exploration of the ins and outs of midcentury spiritualism is great, but this spends the bulk of its time just kinda faffing about being ominous without a real goal. The prose is really hit-or-miss, with a few pretty powerful passages but mostly just a lot of needlessly grimy and brutalist imagery, and a lot of backstory that goes nowhere. I would love to see a film adaptation that strips it down to bare bones and builds something more substantive off of the premise.