Hide

Hide draws on elements from several different genres, including dystopian fiction, psychological thrillers, and the horror genre. One of the key marketing points of the novel is its amusement park setting, which contrasts the expected joy of a carnival with the dark violence that the characters soon experience. This form of dissonance has become a common trope in horror fiction and cinema alike, and White is not the first to use it in her work. Recently, Mike Bokoven’s FantasticLand has gained popularity on “BookTok” on TikTok for recounting the fictional, Lord of the Flies-esque destruction of a theme park crew trapped in a storm. Duncan Ralston’s Ghostland, Stephen King’s Joyland, and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes also use carnival settings to explore the depths of human depravity. This trope can also be seen in films like Zombieland, Hell Fest, Us, and Final Destination 3. Another noteworthy title in this vein is Stephen King’s It; although it is not set in an amusement park, it features a monster in the form of an evil clown named Pennywise, who has since entered the public zeitgeist as an iconic horror character.

With Hide, White expands on the sinister nature of the carnival setting by using the plot device of a survival game to explore the lengths to which humans will go to survive; this particular twist is a popular one in other works of dystopian fiction. From the film Running Man to the popular Hunger Games novels, such narratives seek to offer a futuristic twist on the basic survival plotline, and they also offer scathing social critiques of class-based inequities. For example, the recent Netflix hit Squid Game features deadly versions of childhood games, and the hide-and-seek tournament in Hide explores a similar dissonance between the innocence of childhood and the violence of the park. White therefore combines the conventions of dystopian literature with those of the horror genre to create a supernatural thriller that both utilizes and transcends common plot patterns.