Spoilers, but I mean, it is an old book!
It’s been some time since I’ve read a horror or mystery book that generated a sense of palpable foreboding. Andrew Neiderman’s 1988 book, Surrogate Child, created that feeling on the first few pages and it didn’t let up until the literal last page. When I’m reading a horror or mystery book, I’m usually clocking when the “shit hitting the fan” moment occurs. Is it going to be 10 pages in? 100 pages? Surrogate Child is more insidious, and again, foreboding, in that there is not exactly any one escalating incident. More so, Neiderman establishes an undercurrent of unease that is always with the reader. That made for a book I couldn’t put down.
Joe and Martha lost their 15-year-old son, Solomon, when he died by suicide. He hanged himself on the tree outside their house. Neither parent saw it coming; Martha who was closest to him and Joe who wasn’t. What I found particularly resonate with Neiderman’s book is how vulnerable he made the Joe character as he questioned his relationship to his son, pined for a better father-son relationship, and reflected on his own potential failings. Of course, grief looms large over this book, too, particularly Martha’s character. Joe repairs computers and Martha is a homemaker. However, she’s also a bit odd and it’s hard at times to discern what is a genuinely odd character trait and what is something marred by grief. I came to see Joe and Martha’s relationship as Martha being the dominant one and often, at times, gaslighting Joe so he would acquiesce to her demands. One such “demand,” as it were, was her idea to take in a foster child after Solomon’s death. Not only to take in a foster child, but to take in one who was Solomon’s age and even looked similar to Solomon, hence the title of the book. Jonathan, the foster child, becomes the surrogate for Solomon, the surrogate for Martha’s unwillingness or inability to work with her grief. When Jonathan comes into the home, Martha is constantly comparing him to Solomon, dressing him in Solomon’s clothes, and of course, providing Jonathan Solomon’s preserved-in-amber bedroom, complete with his own computer still retaining Solomon’s digital diary.
What made Martha odd was her lack of boundaries with Solomon and then with Jonathan. She was regularly appearing in the nude in front of Solomon, taking showers with him, each of them washing the other’s backs then drying each other’s backs, and so on, even well into his early teen years. That’s not normal! Joe is uncomfortable with it, but as I said, Martha gaslights him about it. In other words, she makes Joe think he’s going crazy for questioning it at all.
Jonathan is a catfish before “catfishing” was in the lexicon. He also reminded me of the man from the unnerving and chilling documentary, 2012’s The Imposter. Whichever foster home he lands in, he mirrors what’s going on in the home. For example, with his prior foster family, the man was wheelchair-bound due to multiple sclerosis. Jonathan pretended to be afflicted by MS as well, going so far as to confine himself to a wheelchair and take the man’s medicine. The couple returned him to the foster agency. With Joe and Martha, because Jonathan not only has ready access to all of Solomon’s clothes and items — and Martha is willingly treating Jonathan like he’s Solomon — but also the computer diary that is essentially a How-To-Be-Solomon guide, Jonathan becomes Solomon. That only complicates Martha (and Joe’s!) grief, but also confuses people who knew Solomon, like Audra, his girlfriend who then becomes Jonathan’s girlfriend. After all, the thing with people like Jonathan, psychopaths essentially, is that they are capable of charming and winning people over. Which is what made Neiderman’s book so foreboding and insidious: As the reader, you know something is off about Jonathan, but Martha is fully smitten and committed to the Jonathan project, and Joe is slow to realize it. And even once Joe realizes it, Martha continues to gaslight and shut him down about it.
Thanks to the Solomon diary, Jonathan enacts some modicum of revenge on people Solomon seemed to dislike or was frustrated with, including Audra and another boy at the high school. Again, though, that’s what was intriguing about Surrogate Child: aside from those two incidents, there was nothing particularly explosive or violent within the book. The most haunting aspect was obviously the suicide talk and imagery, as well as Solomon appearing like a “ghost” to Martha. I put ghost in scare quotes because I’m still not sure if Martha was legitimately seeing Solomon’s ghost or if she was imagining it, owing to her grief. Regardless, she is so obsessed with making the Jonathan arrangement work, she begins to chastise and verbally abuse Solomon for taking his life and even uses the “dry my back after a shower” as a wedge between ghost Solomon and Jonathan. Boundaries! So, that aspect of Martha, who I think had to have had an inappropriate relationship at best with Solomon and a sexually abusive relationship at worse, never gets resolved. It’s merely insinuated throughout the book.
What does get resolved is Joe growing more and more suspicious of Jonathan and his subtle, manipulative, ingratiating ways. He visits the prior foster family to learn more concretely what happened. Then, unbeknownst to Martha, he calls the foster agency to have Jonathan returned. The night before Jonathan is to be sent back, he completes the mirroring of Solomon’s life by doing what Solomon did at the end of his: dying by suicide. Joe wakes up to Jonathan hanging from the tree. (Why didn’t they cut down the tree after Solomon’s death?! I would not want that visual reminder anywhere near me.)
Martha is institutionalized for a bit after Jonathan’s death. As time goes on though, she comes back home with Joe and then becomes pregnant. Joe is terrified the cycle is going to start up again and Solomon will find a way to curse this child. When they realize it’s a girl, they’re not as worried. However, the girl becomes curious, naturally, about her dead brother and Jonathan. Joe and Martha won’t discuss it, and she’s further told to not go in the attic. Once she’s 15 and her curiosity is insatiable, she goes in the attic and discovers Solomon’s old things, including his computer with his files (I thought Joe destroyed the computer, but I guess not). Neiderman ends with one last foreboding sentence, “And suddenly, it all began again.” Oof.
I enjoyed Neiderman’s self-assurance at going at a steadily escalating pace and sense of dread rather than trying to squeeze in unnecessary dramatic or violent moments. This book didn’t need them. The sense that something was off was enough to propel the book forward through to the climax. I do wish the Martha issues were better addressed or resolved, but overall, I enjoyed my first Andrew Neiderman book.
Milam's Musings 