Not at all bad! But somehow I thought the author could squeeze a bit more out of this story. Or perhaps I am not the right audience for this novel?
ThNot at all bad! But somehow I thought the author could squeeze a bit more out of this story. Or perhaps I am not the right audience for this novel?
This is Not a Test is a post-apocalyptic story, a genre curiously popular in the young adult market. Many novels marketed for young adults seem to deal with the world ending and a group of survivors trying to live after the doom. In many scenarios the end of the world is not a nuclear blow-up, but something even more sinister - a virus attack which reduces the vast majority of the human population to mindless scavengers, commonly known as zombies. Zombies, though dead, seem to inspire an awful lot of authors who happily cater to readers young and young in spirit, who happily devour piece after piece of global annihilation, popular since the first printing of I Am Legend way back in 1954
The storyline of TINAT is concerned with a group of teenagers, who barricaded themselves in a high school. The whole outside world seems to be populated with the undead, who obviously have one thing in mind - get a fresh meal! And this is what I found problematic with this novel - it's essentially teenage angst drama, focused almost entirely on the internal problems of the characters and the relationships between them, their stress and how they deal with the situation they found themselves in. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, and the author does her job well - the characters are well drawn and do not feel like cardboard dummies, propped up to display a particular personality type. However, in my opinion the most interesting aspect of such type of stories is world building, combined with adventure and journey - characters moving from one place to another, giving the author plenty of opportunities to show off with a new world that they invented. After all, as Stephen King once said, how often do you get to wipe out the entire human race?
There is almost nothing of that in TINAT, as the characters are barricaded in their high school and all the possible is confined to that sole location. This concept has been used in fiction and film to great aplomb - remember Hitchcock's Rear Window or Lifeboat? And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, the most famous locked room mystery and probably the best mystery novel ever published takes place entirely in an island estate. The problem with this novel is that the concept does not fit the genre - the world building was completely abandoned, the theme of a plague of undead pushed to the background and made to be almost unnecessary in favor of focusing on the characters and their tribulations. This in itself is not a bad idea, but even at this lenght I felt as if it was a short story forcefully stretched to become a full lenght novel.
This is Not a Test does have a few tricks up its sleve, but I did not find any of them to be surprising or groundbreaking. Although the character sound and act real, their issues alone are not compelling enough for me to give it a higher rating. I felt that the novel would have worked much better were the author to take her characters to the outside world and have them deal with their problems in a larger setting. TINAT is not a bad novel, but for anyone wanting to dip their toes into the genre I would recommend The Reapers Are the Angels, which is a compelling character journey and much more interestingly written....more
I only got 1/4 through this bad book (I hesitate to call it a novel, as there is nothing novel about it) before I reached this offensive chapter and cI only got 1/4 through this bad book (I hesitate to call it a novel, as there is nothing novel about it) before I reached this offensive chapter and could read no more. It goes like this:
"Sparkle Sykes, stepping quietly out of her closet and moving cautiously across the bedroom, followed the six-legged crawling thing that might have been a mutant baby born after a worldwide nuclear holocaust as imagined in the waking nightmares of an insect-phobic, fungi-phobic, rat-crazy mescaline junkie."
This string of pretty unnecessary comparisons is just a prelude to the real truth, revealed in the next sentence:
"It wasn’t a baby."
Impossible!
"she was half afraid it would turn to stare at her and its face would be so hideous that the sight of it would kill her or drive her mad."
How can she be half afraid when she thinks that she sheer stare of this creature can kill her or drive her insane? It's like feeling only a slight chill when you have a gun pointed at your head, which really doesn't happen - well, unless you're James Bond.
"On a Biedermeier chest of drawers stood an eighteen-inch-tall bronze statue of Diana, Roman goddess of the moon and the hunt. It weighed maybe fifteen pounds. Sparkle snared it by the neck and held it in both hands, an awkward but elegant club in case she needed one."
Right, because she might not need anything to defend herself. Maybe the creature just turned up to borrow some sugar? Who the hell knows.
"The grotesque intruder seemed not to have passed through the wall but into it. The wall wasn’t nearly thick enough to accommodate such a creature. In going through the wall, it seemed to have gone out of the Pendleton altogether, into some other reality or dimension."
Good thinking, Captain Obvious!
"Sparkle toured the room and peered in the adjacent bathroom, expecting to find some slouching beast out of a Bosch painting or risen from a Lovecraft story. All was as it should be."
Well, I don't think that anything is as it should be, since there was a scary creature touring the apartment just seconds ago, but then, what do I know...
"The girl was sitting in bed, propped up by a pile of pillows stacked against the headboard, reading a book. She did not react to her mother’s arrival. More often than not, behind the armor of her autism, she refused to recognize the presence of others by even so much as a glance."
If you pardon the pun, doesn't this paragraph seem to be a bit...autistic? It's completely devoid of any energy, movement, anything. I know that it describes a situation, but all I can see is a string of words at a page. And "armor of autism"? Armor is used for protection and has a positive connotation. Autism is limiting to the individual, trapping and forbidding from interaction. It's not an armor - it's a prison.
"Now the six-legged monstrous baby seemed like a nasty drug flashback, though she had never experienced a flashback before."
So how does she know what a flashback is like? Um...
Then we get a short tour of the character's past: we learn about her dad's death, that her mother has been killed by lightning of all possible things, that she was seduced by a drug addict and went through drug induced hell, and has a daughter with that dude, who of course is autistic and of course she's raising her alone. What? Don't like her yet? Well, maybe this will change your mind.
"Young Sparkle in her rubber-soled shoes, on the wet deck of the widow’s walk, orphaned now and traumatized, standing motionless in a state of shock, understood instantly that this world was a dark place and hard, that life was best for those who refused to be broken by it, that being happy required the strength and courage to refuse to be intimidated by anyone or anything. She wept but she did not sob. She stood there for a long time until the tears stopped flowing and the rain washed the salt from her face."
Yeah, doesn't this image try to tug the strings of your heart so very, very hard? Nine year old girl, not only orphaned but also traumatized, standing in the rain (why do such things never happen on a sunny day?), nevertheless not losing strenght! The only thing missing is Tiny Tim on his crutches in the background, shouting "God bless us, everyone!". Good writers manage to rouse emotions in their readers. Dean Koontz simply tells you how you should feel, again and again and again and again...
I didn't even finish this book, but from what I've read about it it gets even worse as it goes on. Currently, it has 131 one star reviews on Amazon and only 53 five star reviews. I'd mostly encourage people to not even pick it up to read, but to pick it up and throw it out of the window. If a writer wrote his first novel in 1968 and in 2012 writes crap like this, perhaps it's time to call it quits.
Okay, maybe I was unfair. I've got to be polite. I've got to be respectful. I will look at the next chapter. I am full of hope!
"After the Russian manicurist departed, Mickey Dime went into the study. The wood floor felt sexy under his bare feet. A lot of things felt sexy to Mickey. Nearly everything."
Ah, this doesn't start well...
"On the carpet, he stood squinching his toes in the deep wool pile. His feet were small and narrow. Well-formed. He was proud of his well-formed feet. His late mother had said that his feet looked like they were carved by the artist Michelangelo. Mickey liked art. Art was sexy."
Aw, crap! Crap! Why did I do this? Well, at least I can't see much of dreadful authorial intrusion, where the authot tries to ridicule what he doesn't like by making a bad character take the position he doesn't agree with, specifically oversimplifying it to make those who disagree with him look as dumb as possible...
"Great art wasn’t about emotion. It was about sensation. Only the bourgeoisie, the tacky middle class, thought art should affect the better emotions and have meaning. If it touched your heart, it wasn’t art. It was kitsch. Art thrilled. Art spoke to the primitive, to the wild animal within. Art strummed deeper chords than mere emotions. If it made you think, it might be philosophy or science or something, but it wasn’t art. True art was about the meaninglessness of life, about the freedom of transgression, about power."
Aw, screw you, 77 Shadow Street. You're a terrible, terrible book, and it makes me sad that trees had to die to carry this awfulness in print. What a waste!
My name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I cMy name is Mary Katherine Blackwood. I am eighteen years old, and I live with my sister Constance. I have often thought that with any luck at all, I could have been born a werewolf, because the two middle fingers on both my hands are the same length, but I have had to be content with what I had. I dislike washing myself, and dogs, and noise. I like my sister Constance, and Richard Plantagenet, and Amanita phalloides, the death-cup mushroom. Everyone else in our family is dead.
This is the brilliant opening of We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Shirley Jackson's last novel - published in 1962, three years before her death. It is narrated in the first person by Mary Katherine "Merricat" Blackwood, who in a series of flashbacks tells the story of herself, her older sister Constance, their uncle Julian, and the Blackwood family. Together with Merricat's cat Jordan, the three live in the secluded Blackwood mansion. Merricat is the only who ever ventures to the outside world, grudgingly, to buy groceries and borrow books from the local library - uncle Julian is an invalid and never leaves the mansion, and Constance suffers from agoraphobia (as did Jackson herself at the time of writing the novel) and does not leave the estate, never going past her garden. As the novel progresses it becomes obvious that Constance's fear of the town and the outsiders is not completely unreasonable - the townspeople are very wary of the Blackwoods; rumors about the sisters circulate, with Constance being accused of poisoning her whole family, and getting away with murder. The sisters and their uncle are effectively ostracized, and as Merricat journeys to purchase her groceries she is taunted by the local children, who sing a malicious nursery rhyme:
Merricat, said Connie, would you like a cup of tea? Oh no, said Merricat, you’ll poison me. Merricat, said Connie, would you like to go to sleep? Down in the boneyard ten feet deep!
In his introduction Jonathan Lethem states that the town of the novel can be recognizes as a fictionalized version of the small town of North Bennington in Vermont - where Jackson and her husband encountered both anti-semitismand anti-intellectualism, and where she died at the age of 48. Life in Vermont, her own neuroses and psychosomatic ilnesses, provided her with more than enough inspiration to write a novel which is almost a textbook example of the American Gothic - it resembles the classic novels such as The House of the Seven Gables by utilizing the hallmarks of the genre: a grand American estate slowly rotting away, a family ruined and disgraced by an Awful Event. The theme of entrapment of the hero in a Gothic House is present - Constance is trapped in the Blackwood house like Emily in the castle of Udolpho in The Mysteries of Udolpho, and Jonathan Harker in the castle of the Count in Dracula. in Obviously there's a Villain figure, the male intruder who disturbs the peaceful life of the Blackwood women and their uncle - played here by the greedy cousin Charles, who has an eye out for the Blackwood's money (amount of which is rumored to be huge - how else would three people could keep on living for years without bothering to work?). As in most gothic novels, there's a suggestion of the supernatural. However unlike most gothics, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is elegantly brief, paying attention to not tire its readers and keep their attention, and does so with its succesful use of the first person. Merricat Blackwood is a delightful narrator although she does not seem to think of herself as of a witch, she nonetheless practices a form of witchcraft by burying various objects all around the Blackwood land, believing in their power of protection. She is home to a collection of neuroses and phobias: she dislikes washing herself and instead of cleaning the house she prefers to "neaten" it. She is completely unaware of her own filthiness and sees the townspeople as dirty, and the town as an ugly place. She thinks that her left eye works better than the right one, and wants to live on the moon; she wishes her thoughts could turn into reality and keeps wishing strongly for things to happen to people. Because of Merricat's character and the fact that she is both the main protagonist and the narrator, the novel contains a fair amount of black humor and dramatic irony - most of which will only be understandable in retrospection, as the reader will posess the full knowledge of the story - or at least as full as Merricat will allow it to be.
Although Shirley Jackson is mostly associated with being a pioneer of horror fiction and many contemporary authors list her as an important influence, this novel is more of a dark comedy about two neurotic women and their incapacitated uncle, chronicling their descent into the grotesque until it reaches its absurd conclusion. It is elegantly written and a great field for interpretation and discussion, yet I felt that it lacked the impact it should have had - unlike her short story, The Lottery whose conclusion was so effective that it shocked the whole nation (and the world - it was banned in South Africa), and her most famous novel The Haunting of Hill House which is considered to be one of the most important horror novels of the 20th century and was adapted as a brilliant film in 1963. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a quiet and underplayed novel, darkly amusing, but feels like a minor work, one which is usually spoken about in reference when discussing the author's main works. Still, at such lenght it's a sin to not read it as it's definitely worth being familiar with, and it's quirky characters and black humor are worth the price of admission alone. This classic won't steal more than two afternoons from your time, and can provide a fertile ground for discussion along with plain, old-fashioned enjoyment from reading. The Haunting of Hill House and We Have Always Lived in the Castle are the only two of Shirley Jackson's novels to remain in print, along with her short stories - reading her work is essential for anyone interested in post-war American fiction. A solitary woman in a field dominated by men, Shirley Jackson left her mark, scared and inspired those whom we read today. We must not let her work be forgotten....more
If you asked me when I was a young boy what my favorite book was, I would without a doubt say Treasure Island. I've read it countless times, over and If you asked me when I was a young boy what my favorite book was, I would without a doubt say Treasure Island. I've read it countless times, over and over again. I was at a perfect age to read that book, too; The most impressionable period, with the mind most bend to accepting the fantastic, allowing me to sail over the seas and far away while never leaving the comforts of my small bed. I still hear the tap tap tap of the blind man's cane, the Black Spot, Long John Silver and his parrot, the grand Hispaniola,/i>, and of course the mysterious island. I haven't read Treasure Island in years, mostly because I am afraid that my wonderful impression of it would be marred by the perception that I would have now.
Dead Sea as you might guess takes place at sea. The plot is very simple: A ship carrying a group of men heading to a job is enveloped with weird looking yellowish fog, and not unexpectedly bad things start happening soon afterwards. A man is swept overboard while running away from something terrifying the ship hits something, and sinks. The survivors get divided into two groups; each group manages to get a lifeboat, and they set on to explore the area that they found themselves in.
Curran does a terrific job at creating a sense of place, and as someone who devoured all the Bermuda Triangle stories as a kid experiencing the area he created was terrific. The narrative switches between the two surviving groups as they try to make progress and understand the situation; the surrounding is unknown and it soon becomes obvious that it is populated with hostility. Curran's sense of imagery is terrific, and the novel serves as a worthy homage to the works of William Hope Hodgson, an English novelist who published many weird sea tales, and of course H.P. Lovecraft, with his sense of the uncanny and the unknown lurking just behind the frail seams of reality.
The exploration is the best part, but as the novel goes along and the characters begin to understand their situation it slowly starts to lose the mood it has succesfully established before. It becomes a bit too much Power Rangers near the end, though thankfully it is not overdone; and although I really enjoyed the time spent with it I'm not sure if I would read it again. It's not a bad book, but it's not a spectacular book; it's a fine book to spend several evenings with and have a lot of fun. It does its job just right, and for that I give it 4 stars....more
The most horrifying thing about Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is that it is based on a true incident - horrendous abuse, torture and eventual murdThe most horrifying thing about Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door is that it is based on a true incident - horrendous abuse, torture and eventual murder of the 16 year old Sylvia Likens in 1965. Sylvia's parents, carnival workers who moved often, left her and her sister in Indianapolis under care of their acquaintaince, Gertrude Baniszewski. Baniszewski was paid to care for the girls, but as the payments were late she began to abuse the young girls, focusing the torrents of her anger on Sylvia. Details of this abuse are too horrible to recount, but what is horrifying is that Baniszewski openly encouraged her own children and those of the neighbors to indulge in tormenting Sylvia on their own, imprisoning her in the basement. Although Baniszewski's daughter, Paula, would not only brag about it in public but also beat Sylvia in front of the neighbors, nobody did anything to stop it or help her in any way - Sylvia eventually died from her extensive injuries.
I did not know about this before I read the book - in fact, I approached it without knowing anything about it. I have only read one novel by Jack Ketchum before, Off Season, which is a visceral, gruesome horror novel featuring a tribe of cannibals and some very unlucky vacationers somewhere in remote woods in Maine (the same state where Stephen King lives and sets most of his work). Although it has plenty of intense and graphic violence, Off Season lacks pretty much everything else, which made it a rather disappointing reading experience for this reader.
The Girl Next Door is a much better book, because in it Ketchum does what he didn't do in Off Season - develop a proper build up and characters, and establish tension which lasts almost all throughout the novel. The narrator of the novel, David, writes it down as a recollection of events which happened a long time ago, when he was growing up in a small town. Although David is a successful financier on Wall Street, he has two failed marriages behind him already, and is at the eve of the third - he is filled with sadness, regret and guilt, haunted and gradually destroyed by events which took place thirty years ago.
To an outsider, David's childhood was a relatively normal experience of a young boy growing up in a small town in the 1950's. Although he can see that his parents have marital troubles and knows of his fathers's affairs, he has a circle of friends who live right next door to him - the Chandler boys who live with their mother, Ruth. Their father left the family for another woman, leaving Ruth alone to take care of the three boys. Everyone at the street loved to hang out at Ruth's place - even though she kept her boys in line, she also gave them beers and let them enjoy themselves; David and his friends felt good at Ruth's place, because it was a place where they could be themselves, and feel natural - in David's case more so than at home. Although David does not consider his childhood to be special in any way, there is no suggestion that he is unhappy - he camped with his friends in a real tent, listened to Elvis on a record player, smoked cigarettes and drank beers in secret. In another life his childhood recollection would be much more in tune with the novel's idyllic opening image: a young boy lying down next to a clear brook in a picturesque forest, catching crayfish on a bright, sunny day.
The woods and the brook are both the opening of the book, and the end of David's childhood: this is where he meets Meg Loughlin, whom he declares to be the prettiest girl that he ever saw. David is smitten with Meg, and confused by her - she is older than other girls that he knows, and his feelings towards her are different. He longs and yearns for something when he sees her, but doesn't exactly know what; Ketchum manages to capture the butterflies of youthful infatuation in his net - David learns that Meg is a distant relative of the Chandler's, and that she will be moving in with them together with her younger sister, Susan, after they both lost their parents in a car accident. The accident left Meg with a scar, and Susan crippled - unable to walk without her crutches. David is even more impressed with Meg as a survivor: he manages to overcome his shyness and ask her to go to the local carnival with him, where they share several sweet and memorable moments. In another life, these moments could develop into a beautiful romance; here, they are a prelude to a great tragedy.
The problem with novels based on real events is that we know what will eventually happen, and it is no great surprise when it finally does. This is also the case with The Girl Next Door, but does not ruin the book. Ketchum does a very good job with establishing a slow buildup, with proper foreshadowing in all the right places. The specter of horror hangs over the book, and when it finally descends it begins slow, but quickly becomes almost unimaginable. The fact that The Girl Next Door was inspired by the murder of Sylvia Likens does not cheapen it, or make it exploitative - Meg is not Sylvia, and Ruth is not Gertrude. There have been hundreds, if not thousands, of such cases all over the world
There are two big Whys in this book - why did Ruth begin abusing Meg and her sister? Was she jealous of her youth and beauty, which painfully reminded her of her own age and hardships which tore away at her looks? Did Meg remind her of her husband, who ran away with a woman who could have been her? Did she think that her boys might become interested in Meg more than they were in her? Did she not want her authority questioned, both as a parent and a woman? I think this question is not adequately answered - but then again we see Ruth only from David's perspective, and although he sees her at her house he mostly spends time with her boys, and does not live with them. David acknowledges that he does not understand why she did what she did - destroyed a young girl.
The other big why regards the Chandler children and David - why did they participate in the abuse and grew increasingly more ferocious, and why did David do nothing to stop them and stood idly by? How could the Chandlers horribly abuse and torture Meg, and at the same time go on with their lives as if this was a perfectly ordinary thing to happen?
Although David does not take part in the abuse of Meg, he does not do anything to stop it or tell his own parents - until it is too late. Besides Meg and Susan who are both obvious innocents, David is the only decent character in the entire book - yet he is not without his flaws and desires, which he himself acknowledges: he peeps on Meg with the other boys, waiting for her to undress in her room, and when she doesn't even show up he is furious - and begins to hate her for it, as if she disappointed him, owed him her nakedness. When he does see Meg naked and in captivity, he is overcome with desire to touch her.
His saving grace is that he doesn't touch Meg, but his condemnation is that he doesn't stop others from touching her, and doing worse things. Of all the youths in the book, David is the only character who is at first taken aback by Meg's treatment, and eventually sees what is happening to her as something terribly wrong. He is the only boy who sympathizes with Meg, and who feels ashamed at what is happening and his own role in it - but this knowledge, or conscience if you will, makes him even more guilty than those who took part in her abuse. The Chandler children did it all under the watchful eye of their mother - if she would order them to stop, they would stop immediately. If she'd forbid them from hurting her, they would not hurt her. But Ruth did not only not stop her sons from torturing Meg, she actively encouraged it and took part in it herself. David acknowledges that this torment was Ruth's show - her presence hangs above them like a ghost, even when she is not in the room with them. Although Ruth set a series of rules which would justify the abuse -as much for the boys, as for herself - these rules eventually collapsed together with her sanity, and all the bets were off. Still, even then, she watched over everything - and everything was possible because she allowed it to be so.
Should we hate David? Condemn him for not helping Meg, not telling others about her torment? It is easy for us to be outraged, even furious with him, by being entirely removed from his position and enriched by hindsight. Could David possibly know what would happen to the sweet girl he first saw at the brook? David does not have anyone to talk to - he understand that talking to other kids is pointless; although they knew that something was happening at Ruth's house - some vaguely, others with specific detail - not a single one of them had any opinion about it. It was like a force of nature; there was no point in discussing something that can't be influenced.
In fact, it was not the torment that was a force of nature, but the fact that it took place under the watch and guidance of an adult. In the small, suburban community in the 1950's, adults controlled all aspects of lives of children: adults were the ultimate authority, and what they said could not be questioned. This was the social order on which many today look fondly upon: children wouldn't even dare to challenge the actions of their parents and other adults, and corporal punishment was not only openly accepted but actively encouraged. This was the whole point of it: kids were supposed to be punished by adults; they were supposed to be subservient to them, and obey them unquestioningly. Parental love was not supposed to be easy and selfless, but exactly the opposite. It was supposed to be tough love, which would adequately prepare children for many hardships which would await them in the world. Kids had to be straightened out, made into proper men and women. At one point David acknowledges that kids belong to their parents, "body and soul... we were just kids. We were property".
David is conflicted. If Ruth is an adult, a parent of his best friends and now a parental figure for Meg, then who is he to judge that what she is doing is wrong? How can he know that what she is doing to Meg now will not turn out to have been right in the future after all? He still feels attracted to Meg, but Ruth and her children are his old friends, who were always good to him. In a memorable scene, David sees Meg approach a police officer to complain about her mistreatment. Along with the other kids who witness the scene, David feels a sense of betrayal - how could she tell on them, and to an adult? - and peculiar, scared excitement - how could she upset the social order, and tell on an adult on another adult? - but the police officer brushes her away; he is a part of the society, and in this society children do not question their parents, much less tell on them to others. He tells Meg she should think of Mrs. Chandler as her mother, and that her mother would probably treat her the same way. Who's to say?", he asks, and does precisely nothing - for which Ruth mocks and torments Meg later, telling her that she deserves punishment for trying to snitch on her.
Shouldn't snitches be punished? David tries to talk to his father, but he is no good. When David asks his father if it is ever right to hit a woman, he realizes that with his evasive and non-committal answers his father is trying to justify his own lashing out at his mother, which led to the coldness and distance between them. It becomes apparent that David's father does not know his own son, and that David is unable to connect with his father; mostly he feels nothing for him, and if he does feel any emotion it is usually contempt. Later in the book, David tries to tell his mother - but realizes that he cannot; although she is the only person he can tell, he realizes that by his own indifference he also took part in Meg's torment, and is unable to tell this to her. He realizes that he has betrayed Meg, and sees himself as evil - Does he fear that this is how his mother will also see him, or does he fear that this is who he actually is?
We were juveniles, writes David at the end of the book, as if legal classification could offer any explanation. By now it is obvious that this entire writing is not really meant for any reader, but for himself; he confesses to everything that happened now because he did not then, but just as then there is no person who can help him now. He is alone and realizes this, plagued by recurring nightmares of his own failure to act, which destroy his relationships and life. This is where the true horror of this book lies - not description of torture and abuse. They actually are not as graphic as I expected them to be - they are horrific, but Ketchum doesn't focus on them. I can easily see many instances in which this book could have easily turned into simple, schlock horror, but violence is limited to an effective but not overbearing level. The actual horror is the gradually emerging sense of complicity in something terrible - and the fact that David uses as a poor attempt at consoling himself at the beginning, but which makes things infinitely worse: "That it was happening all over, not just at Ruth's house but everywhere."
Everything has been said but not everyone has said it yet.
- Rep. Morris Udall at the 1988 Democratic convention
I've put in so many enigmas andEverything has been said but not everyone has said it yet.
- Rep. Morris Udall at the 1988 Democratic convention
I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.
- James Joyce in a reply reply for a request for a plan of Ulysses
The thoroughly well-informed man--that is the modern ideal. And the mind of the thoroughly well-informed man is a dreadful thing. It is like a bric-a-brac shop, all monsters and dust, with everything priced above its proper value.
- Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
Reading House of Leaves reminded me of an essay I've read by David Foster Wallace, who was quoting someone on the output of the ever prolific John Updike (may both rest in peace): "Has the son of a bitch ever had one unpublished thought?". This is a reaction one might have when first exposed to House of Leaves (of course sans the "son of a bitch" part). This is Mark Z. Danielewski's first novel, and he devoted 10 years (that's like 10 whole years!) to write it - and like so many first novels it is full of what the author wanted to show off about his knowledge: House of Leaves is the book which will jump up to you and scream in your face, "look at me! Hey, would you look at me? Do you have an X number of hours to spare to decode me, boy?". Many might find that they do not wish to spare the hours required by this tome; to them the book issues a warning right at its beginning, stating that "this is not for you.". However, as we know such warnings are like catnip for curious cats - I mean, seriously, who would have stopped reading right there? Have we all forgotten about all these horror movies where protagonists go exactly where they should not go, ignoring all the warning sings, because they want to "check things out"? I see what you did there, House of Leaves.
The story is this: A man named Will Navidson moves with his family into a new home on Ash Tree Lane, somewhere in Virginia (just next to West Virginia where they set all these hilbilly horror movies). Navidson, a recognized photographer (a documentarist of war) is accompanied by his wife, Karen - a former fashion model - and two children, Daisy and Chad. Some stress has been plaguing the family of the Navidsons, so they decide to change environment in hope of restoring family dynamics (Remember The Shining? Remember how it ended?). Only when they move in they discover that the house has changed: it appears bigger on the inside than the outside, by a fraction of an inch. But that's not it! Soon a mysterious new hallway appears. What does Navidson do? Take the kids and run out of this scary house like normal people do? No, of course they stay - I mean, if they didn't we wouldn't exactly have much to read about. Like a good horror protagonist, Navidson does exactly what the genre demands of him. He goes exploring. now, that can possibly go wrong...or can it?
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While this might not sound like the most original or compelling thing on the planet, you have to understand that House of Leaves is all about the execution as opposed to content. Althought the novel has everything and the kitchen sink in it, it's all about how these things are put together.
See, House of Leaves is a narrative which does absolutely everything to be as unconventional as possible - the story of Navidson, his family and explorations of the house are not narrated by him or the traditional third person omniscient narrator - that would be much, much too simple. The narrative is reminiscent of a Russian matryoshka doll: all we know about Navidson comes from The Navidson Record, which is the name of the documentary film Navidson has made about the house, consisting of the tapes he filmed there. Now, since we are dealing with a recorded narrative, there must be somebody who put it together for us - and there is. We never get to see the actual Navidson Record - what we get is an academic analysis of it, made by a man named Zampano. Zampano did an impressive amount of research and created a definite analysis of The Navidson Record - analyzing every scene in great detail, offering every possible interpretation, and making footnotes, lots and lots and lots and lots of footnotes. Another reviewer called the amount of footnotes in this book "retarded" and I can't really disagree. Even footnotes have footnotes. So, this Zampano feller must be really proud of what possibly is his life's worh, right?
Well, he can't really be - he's dead. What he wrote about The Navidson Record is discovered in his apartment by a man named Johnny Truant who was out of housing and out of luck, and with nothing better to do went to see the dead man's apartment. Here's the kicker - Truant knows that the decribed film cannot possibly exist, as he finds not even a mention of it anywhere outside Zampano's notes - and Zampano could not even see the film; he was "blind as a bat". Zampano himself described the Record in his analysis as having been classified as a hoax by most experts. Nevertheless, Johnny is drawn to Zampano's analysis and begins filling the blanks he left behind - a process which starts messing with his head (that and all the drugs he does). Johhny also inserts lenghty footnotes into the text, footnoting Zampano's footnotes and producing his own - many of which are unrelated to The Navidson Record (or are they?) and are concerned mostly with his cruising around L.A. and reminiscences of trips around the world, working junk jobs and sexual relations with at least a thousand hot babes. Now, although Johnny is the closest of what this book has to a protagonist, he is not the narrator either - the whole text has been put together by anonymous Editors, of whom we know nothing, and who claim to have never even seen or met Johnny - all matters concerning the text have been discussed via correspondence or in rare instances on the telephone. Thank God all of these at least have their own font!
Can it get any better? Yes, it can. The important aspect of this novel is how the text is arranged on the page. Well, at least that's what we're supposed to think when we're reading it. At first the text appears like any other academic journal, but as it progresses...footnotes appear upside down, words are posed to reflect what's occuring in the narrative (you know, when someone climbs the text is in the upper portion of the page, when someone goes down it's in the lower portion, when there's little space it's all crammed up, when there's lots of space it's all spread out, etc, etc, etc.). And is House of Leaves the book which will make you use the mirror to decipher it? Oh yes. Oh yes, dear reader, you are holding that book.
XKCD, a popular webcomic, does a pretty accurate impression of th structure of House of Leaves - with pancakes. Here's how it looks like.
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There is a fair amount of humor in House of Leaves. Danielewski really hams it up here: the whole book is a fictional analysis of a fictional document which is a fictional study of a fictional film. But that is not all. Danielewski hams it even further, making the only expert on the non-existent film blind (and dead), and gives the task of analyzing his work to the most unreliable of all characters, Johnny Truant, a Bret Easton Ellis-ish character whose junkie lifestyle is such that half the time he is not sure he is even there (get it? Truant?). The footnotes? Oh God, the footnotes. Footnotes in this book often have their own footnotes (often concerning material appearing hundreds of pages later) and are a giant sandbox for Danielewski to play in. Most of the material he cites...does not exist (is this even a surprise by now?) and he goes ham with being creative with that. The Feng Shui Guide to The Navidson Record is cited when describing the house's interior, and a dismissal of something as crap is quoted from an article titled..."Crap", from New Perspectives Quarterly. There's a ton of examples like these in the text, and I am completely sure that D's grocery list is there, too. He has his fun with those who read these scrupulously - at one point Zampano footnotes an abysmally long list of names, which goes on for absolutely forever...to which Johnny Truant supplies his own footnote and states that the list is entirely random and made just for the kick of it. At another point Zampano claims that the Weiner Brothers cut a whole sequence from the theatrical release of The Navidson Record because it was too self-referential...but don't worry, you'll get it in a DVD release! And this is in a book where half of it is a commentary on the other half. Near the end Johnny starts wondering that maybe he too does not exist, which drives the poor boy nuts - along with the readers. If there was a troll of the year award when this book was published, mr. D should definitely have won it. His aesthetic is that of excess; with all its immense superabundance of all things it is reminiscent of the Pierce Brosnan James Bond films, especially the first one - GoldenEye - where Brosnan engages in an unforgettable tank chase through St. Petersburg, undoubtedly the finest moment in the Bond franchise and arguably one of the finest scenes in contemporary cinema. The moment where he hits that statue and drives with it on top of the tank alone made it worthy of at least two Oscars.
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Also, House of Leaves has a section with fake interviews with real people about The Navidson Record which is flat out funny and very well written, as the author manages to capture the personas of his interviewees: Hunter S. Thompson begins by stating that "it was a bad morning", Steve Wozniak is jolly and Stephen King wants to see the house. There's even America's most famous literature critic, Harold Bloom, who calls the interviewer "dear child" and quotes at lenght from his famous work The Anxiety of Influence (which is another joke inside a joke - Bloom's book is about the relationship poets have with their predecessors - it is a source of anxiety and troubles their originality - pretty spot on for a book which is a commentary on a commentary. More on it later).
Some readers wrote that this is the scariest book that they have ever read. Comparisons have been made between House of Leaves and The Blair Witch Project. Remember that movie? It's the one with a group of students who get lost somewhere in the woods of Maryland and can't find a way out. Of course they are in the woods because they're investigating a local legend of the Blair Witch - so lots of creepy stuff happens in that forest. Blair Witch has singlehandedly resurrected the genre of film known as the "found footage" - the viewer knows that these students have disappeared in these woods, and all that has been found of them is this video. The studios spend millions promoting it with the emphasis on the thin barrier betweeen reality and fiction, making many people wonder - is it real or not? Blair Witch has essentially brough back such filmmaking into the mainstream, allowing for movies such as Paranormal Activity to achieve success and become franchises; it has also aged quite badly, as now most kids with camcorders and Adobe programs can essentially film if again. Film lots of woods; rustle the leaves a lot; wait for the night to fall and make some scary noises. Voila! You've got your own movie. This approach did breed some interesting offspring, such as the intriguing YouTube series Marble Hornets - creepy and addictive!
House of Leaves takes the Blair Witch approach with the Navidson Record, but the constant footnotes and interruptions make it impossible to lose track of the fact that you're reading an analysis of an analysis of a film. It's like watching The Blair Witch Project with audio commentary, when the director and cast describe their experiences on set as the movie plays along. Imagine watching this suspenseful scene, where the heroine is all alone in a tent in these dark and creepy woods - at night - and she hears these creepy noises outside the tent which are getting nearer and nearer...and then you hear the crew speak: "so yeah, Hank was just running around this here tent to create the suspense, and then out of nowhere came this big moose which bit him right in the ass! Boy, you should have heard him yell. We had to cut the audio and redub it in the studio. Hank: yeah, I almost lost my balls." This is a pretty accurate feeling you get when you're reading House of Leaves - it never relaxes its grip on you, never fully allowing its reader to forget that they arereading and letting them start experiencing. You could say that Danielewski's is the biggest enemy of his own text: his analytical approach often kills the tension, as the reader is constantly aware that he/she is being toyed with. Many readers will feel that they are not experiencing the descent into madness; it's the writer who drives them mad with his big, if repetitive, bag of tricks.
But then, he is doing it consciously, and it works; it detracts the reader from noticing his weaknesses - The Navidson Record is really a pretty blank mish-mash of horror influences: shades of Poe's classic tales; A Descent into the Maelström is the one which immediately comes to mind, and of course Lovecraft; the whole book screams his name. Of more contemporary authors and their works Shirley Jackson and Stephen King come to mind: The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining can be seen as possible influences, particularly the latter with its genius loci/troubled family theme, and is perhaps its most famous example.
Zampano's analysis of The Navidson Record - which is an analysis of a nonexistent work - reminded me of Stanisław Lem's two volumes of similar topic. In Imaginary Magnitude (1973) he collected introductions for nonexistent books; A Perfect Vacuum (1971) is a collection of reviews and criticism of nonexistent works of literature. In Provocation (1984) and Library of the 21st Century (1986) are both collections of reviews of books which do not exist. Lovecraft (to whom this book oves an obviously great debt) invented whole universes and mythos, and Necronomicon is an account of their existence.Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut's famous satire quotes heavily from The Books of Bokonon, a sacred text of Bokononism. In The Blind Assasin, Margaret Atwood also employs a fictional text of the same name, which plays a crucial role. Jorge Luis Borges wrote of nonexistent works in his fiction: a good example is his short story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote. In 1988, Jerzy Kosinski wrote The Hermit of 69th Street, a fictional novel which is largely composed of quotations from real texts or utterances, all of which are sourced and credited to their respective authors - in no way a small feat, and it does make House of Leaves look a bit pale when you realize that mr. D is simply making up the vast majority of his referrences as he goes on.
Johnny Truant is awfully like a Brat Pack protagonist, straight out of novels by Bret Ellis or Jay McInerey. Of all the women Johnny interacts with, Danielewski has to commit the biggest cliche and make him be most devoted to a stripper - a whore with the heart of gold. A lot of this novel can be seen as autobiographical - Danielewski traveled to Paris, therefore Johnny has lived in Paris and traveled around Europe; sources are quoted in German and not always translated, and also in Latin and other languages; one can only imagine what the author must have felt when he was discovering LitCrit 101 and browsing academic journals. And he does include all that he can possibly think of: at the end of the novel the reader will find poetry (most of which is pretty bland) which is claimed to have been written in various European cities (dates are given, too) and illustrations/photographs. At the very end, the reader discovers a section devoted to Johnny's mother - letters she sent him from a mental hospital, sort of a reversed Flowers for Algernon. The damn thing even has an index! Ona can imagine Danielewski sitting in his chair, back to the reader, petting his cat and laughing devilishly, hiding behind his post-modern armor. You thought it was funny? Well, you don't know my art. What, you didn't thought it was funny? Well, shame on you, you missed my joke! He has cornered all the corners. He holds all the guns in a Mexican standoff. He cannot lose; he always wins. He's the Steven Seagal of writers.
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Unlike Seagal's films (especially the latter ones), House of Leaves definitely shows the author's talent and devotion to the project. His sister also contributed - she's called Poe and her album is titled Haunted, drawing inspiration from this novel. Danielewski's work is opaque just enough; it's not translucent, making the reader see right through it, but allowing too see one's reflection; much of how this work will be read and understood depends on its reader, if not all of it. Some will see the most horrifying book of their lives; others will be bored; others will be genuinely interested, and some might even be fascinated. Who is right? Who is wrong? Does it even matter? Although House of Leaves does sound better than it actually is (but then what does not?) it still fulfills an important task: it provokes an emotional and intellectual response in the reader, making him think about literature, art, and life in general. Few of those who will read this book all the way through will be indifferent towards it. To talk about it, one has to expand and go beyond the book itself, towards one's outside knowledge and interests. Just like the book is not containted in itself, and is composed of quotations, other accounts and records. It is an excellent platform for discussion on influence, interpretation and meaning, and literary and structutal tradition. To think about what it means to track allusions in a novel. Literature as an art and history depends on us being able to do something with these allusions, have something to say about them - how we, as readers, make sense of them when we're looking at the evolution of the art form. This is why studies of literature consist also of historical and cultural studies, and students read from a historical range of works which represent major historical periods and movements, and have to learn, acknowledge and understand the literary tradition. Novels depend on novels written before them; this one is just a bit more virtuosic representation of this fact. And the funniest thing I left right for the end - because of its crazy layout the book is smaller on the inside than it appears from the outside. Get it? Hats off!
Meanwhile, you can check out the nice and condensed version and analysis at the same time: Torching Leaves
This is a long review.I declare that I have oficially ran out of words that Goodrea----...more
Richard Matheson was a writer for the original Twilight Zone, and most of his work shows why. Short and tight, his work has entertained, surprised andRichard Matheson was a writer for the original Twilight Zone, and most of his work shows why. Short and tight, his work has entertained, surprised and amazed whole generations. He became a writer's writer, with many citing him as inspiration and motivation to pursue their own dreams of writing.
A Shadow on the Sun, a short paperback western published in 1994, is not destined to become a classic, but certainly succeeds at being a piece of entertaining fiction, if short. I think that if we were to classify it, it might serve as a good example of the Weird West genre - where the work is a Western with the traditional staples of the genre, laced with elements of Weird Fiction, most commonly a supernatural occurence based on a mythology either borrowed from famous literary predecessors or invented by the author himself.
Matheson's prose style is very sparse, as in most of his other works. He's never the one to use 10 words when two will suffice, always giving the reader just enough detail to not be overtly vague, and leave enough for the imagination to conjure up. This is a great example of this - there's not a word that's unnecessary, and on the novel short lenght quite a lot of characters make an appearance and quite a lot happens.
I've read somewhere that this was originally a screenplay, and it seems it could be. It would do well as an extended episode of the original Twilight Zone, or a TV movie. The suspense is taut, the characters interesting, and you can't just not like a horror novel set in the Old West. It's a short and sweet example of the forgotten paperback novel, where the story was all that counted - it grabbed you by the opening hook and kept interested all the way through to the last page. A good piece of solid writing with an entertaining plot. A very entertaining way to spend an afternoon....more
The biggest flaw of Off Season is its publishing date - 1980. As it was a debut novel, the publishing house had quite a lot of power over the author, The biggest flaw of Off Season is its publishing date - 1980. As it was a debut novel, the publishing house had quite a lot of power over the author, and made him cut and edit the book the way they wanted. Upon publication the book raised extreme controversy, due to its violent and graphic nature. It got so bad that Ballantine, who initially published the novel, decided to stop supporting it and withtdrew it from circulation after the first printings.
In 1999 a small publishing house specialising in horror fiction - Cemetery Dance - picked it up for an reissue; this time including the author's original version, including the text which has been cut from or edited in the first publication. The result got a glowing blurb from Stephen King who called the author "probably the scariest guy in America". After 19 years, readers can finally read the work as the author intended it.
And it turns out that there's not much to swoon over, if anything. The storyline is absolutely basic - a group of friends go to a small coastline town in Maine for a vacation, where they are targeted by a group of inbred, cannibalistic savages, who live in a small cave and go out hunting at night. Such plot might have been original or groundbreaking in 1980, but since then it has been done to death (get it?) in horror movies and novels. The characters are cardboard and boring, the most interesting being the savages. The novel is driven almost entirely by the horrific acts of violence, described in gruesome detail. The violence is extreme and the author pulls absolutely no punches, but that's pretty much all the is to it.
The second biggest flaw of Off Season is that it's an one trick pony; there's no meat to it, if you'll pardon the pun. It has little re-read value, and aims more at the gross out and shock factors than anything else. Not that it's neccesarily bad; it's just that it's not what I would expect from a novel praised so highly. The copy I was reading had an extra short story at the end, "Winter Child", which I thought was much more atmospheric and climatic than the whole novel. ...more
Obviously inspired by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Richard Matheson's Hell House pays homage to Jackson by borrowing the basic crux oObviously inspired by Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, Richard Matheson's Hell House pays homage to Jackson by borrowing the basic crux of the plot - several characters gathering to investigate a seemingly haunted mansion - and making the story his own instead of merely copying the earlier novel.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of the original Hill House was its ambiguity concerning the origin and source of the hauntings; it Hell House there is plenty of ambiguity, but it's obvious that the hauntings and phenomena are real, and that the house fully deserves its hellish name. Matheson slowly reveals a terrific and terrifying backstory, revealing it bit by bit, obviously inspired by the classic Poe story, only much more gruesome and unrelenting.
All characters have different opinions on the phenomena occuring in the house; All have separate and unique pasts, problems and fears. The novel is divided in short chapters - a bigger sectioon for each day the characters spend in the house is divided into separate hours - and the perspective switches from character to character, giving the reader a sense of immediacy and relentless plugging forward, building suspense by using cliffhangers and shifting the perspective at the exact right moment. Matheson's writing style here is "less is more", and he writes in simple, detached language, describing the events with cold indifference. The overwhelming evil of the mansion, its windows bricked, sitting alone in its foggy surroundings, its history and look are described in gruesome and fascinating detail, barely allowing the reader to catch a breath. The novel is notable for openly using sexual elements and incorporating them into the plot, often in very vulgar ways. However, it never once descends to the realm of simple pornography that plagues many novels written in its wake; its a carefully implemented element of the plot, without it the novel would lose much of its power.
Hell House, although obviously borrowing heavily from the gothic convention, threw it out of the window: in most gothic novels the horrific themes are often happening offscreen, are suggested or discovered by the characters after the events themselves. The sense of mystery is more emphasized than the feeling of terror. Sexual themes, which have been before only hinted upon, are present and used with no qualms, openly and bravely.Hell House becomes a new archetype of a gothic novel, assaulting the reader with carnal, palpable terror, from its first page to the very end. It's an important, brave book, erotic and repulsive, compelling and fascinating. It set the way for future works, most of them inferior and simplistic in comparison....more
First publishes in 1958, A Stir of Echoes is Richard Matheson's third major work, the first two being the classic I Am Legend which guaranteed his litFirst publishes in 1958, A Stir of Echoes is Richard Matheson's third major work, the first two being the classic I Am Legend which guaranteed his literary immmortality, and The Incredible Shrinking Man, the classic horror novel with a man racing against literally increasing odds.
The basic plot crux is very simple and the storyline doesn't deviate much from it: Tom Wallace agrees to undergo a hypnosis, as he believes he won't be affected by it. As it usually turns out in novels of the uncanny things don't exactly go the easy way out, and Tom notices that his life has changed. He realizes that he is able to read the thoughts of people around him, and has strange visions of a woman in a black dress in his house. He finds that his abilities are not always welcome, and as his sense of isolation progresses so does the mystery that he is trying to solve.
What is notable about A Stir of Echoes is that apart from the technological gadgets like the cellphone or the computer the novel doesn't feel at all dated. Matheson writes in a language which is simple and clear, and the sense of Tom's growing sense of isolation and disturbance is well rendered. Short in lenght with 0% filler, the novel can be read at one or two sittings with the tension steadily developing until a surprising ending. However, the fact that it was published after two of Matheson's most influential novels makes it seem pale in comparison; along with the fact that he later wrote masterful short stories and adapted some of them as scripts for the original >i>Twilight Zone, and has written novels such as Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come, both adapted into well known films. A Stir of Echoes is not a bad novel, but it's not exceptional either; it should serve as a good way to spend an afternoon or two, but it's hardly to be a lifechanging experience....more
I blasted through this book in a two days, starting deep into the night and finishing just minutes ago. I would have finished it during the night but I blasted through this book in a two days, starting deep into the night and finishing just minutes ago. I would have finished it during the night but I had to go to sleep. This has turned out totally against what I was expecting - a mediocre mystery thriller - and became something different entirely. I don't know if enjoyment is a right word in this case, but I was barely able to tear myself away from it and couldn't wait to be able to get back to it and read to the very end.
Sure, the thriller elements are most definitely present, and the novel is inspired by the classic noir detective fiction (the blurb mentions the author's fascination with Dashiel Hammett's Red Harvest). However it would be to do the novel a disservice by classifying it as simple genre fiction, even if drawing from the great masters. Last Days cannot be properly classified to just one genre - it draws from them, mixes them, refuses to melt and then become solid again, escaping categorial impositions. There's plenty of imagery and elements associated with horror fiction here, especially the Weird kind; The pervading, Kafkaesque sense of helplesness and being lost in a labyrinth of the events that can't be comprehend is a prevailing theme, where the labyrinth is really a slide, and even though one wanders through its mazes they always somehow point downwards, where there's only darkness.
The protagonist, Kline, is a retired detective. A recluse, Kline now lives solitarily in his apartment. Money doesn't trouble him. What does is the brutal mutiliation he was forced to perform on himself during one case; an attacker forced him to cut his own hand with a cleaver. Kline managed to outsmart the attacker and kill him, and live by cauterizing the wound. One day he receives a phone call: In a scene which is almost a satire of the opening of The Trial two voices ask him about the details of the mutiliation, revealing to him that they know more about it that he has revealed to the press; they say that they offer him a plane ticket which will take him to them, saying that they're "opportunity". They refuse to offer more information, and Kline choses to ignore the call and the ticket, as he has enough money to live on and doesn't need to get involved in anything. A week later the phone calls again, with the same two voices, which Kline gives the names of Lisp and Low Voice; they grow desperate, saying that he's their man and that they're the same as him.
"If we wanted to kill you," Lisp said. "You'd be dead by now." It was odd, thought Kline, to be threatened by a man with a lisp. "Please, Mr. Kline," said Low Voice. "We don't want to kill you," said Lisp. "Ergo, you're still alive." "Aren't you even a little curious, Mr. Kline?" asked Low Voice.
As in The Trial, the two men eventually show up at Kline's place, and it becomes clear that he has no choice in this matter; he's dragged into a situation which is so bizarre and riddled with ill logic and seemingly unsolvable. To say more of the plot would be to spoil it, and that would be a crime comitted against the text. It is a temptation to discuss it in detail, as it proves more complexity that its slim lenght might suggest; it contains imagery which is graphic, visceral and disturbing.
Evenson writes with a detached, impassionate voice, which works brilliantly. His prose is taut, his language and sentences so bare that they are almost transparent, letting the reader into the mind and confusion of Kline's character. He writes without any safety net, grabbing his readers by the throat and almost suffocating them with the sheer intensity of what is going on there, and boy, is there much going on. Last Days reads like a rocket, taking off and never letting go, from the first word to the very last. Kline's limited perspective, disorientation and frustration all happens at such a frantic pace that is bound to leave some breathless, and it's bad to be breathless amids terror and horrible things. Evenson uses cliffhangers masterfully, sometimes several per chapter, never allowing for things to slow down, not only keeping the suspense and interest of the reader but driving it higher and higher, higher and higher, until it becomes almost unbearable and we wish we could have read three pages at once, then four, five.
What is worth pointing out that in all the seriousness of the book's tone and content, it contains plenty of humor. Kline is a private eye who never loses his cool, and the dialogue he engages in is straight of the hardboiled fiction of the past. aspects of the plot are so over the top that they're almost a farce but the whole thing absolutely works, and brilliantly! Every task is difficult, every decision morally complex and ambiguous. Character which can be perceived as sympathetic are really monsters, and monsters soon start to be perceived as sympathetic. Kline is thrown around, his physical strenght never in full potential, never allowing him an easy way out - but then so is the power of his opponents. The question of power is another fascinating theme of this surprisingly complex and multilayered work.
If you ever were watching The Maltese Falcon and wanted to know how it would be if Humphrey Bogart would get involved in something really, really weird, then this is your chance! The novel is bound to inspire a number of reactions from readers, but I can't see anyone being disappointed by it. It's short, it's taut, it's complex, it's fascinating, it's disturbing and immersing. It grabs you and doesn't want to let go, so be prepared!
Peter Straub has penned a 11 page introduction, in which he discusses the novel at lenght, but also reveals major plot points and events, along with the conclusion. It's great reading, but only after reading the text. It's as carefully planned as a house of cards, and the best way to get to know it is just to start at page one and go on from there.
The novel is in fact a composite of two novellas. The first one, Brotherhood of Mutiliation was so popular that the author decided to expand on it and wrote a part two, Last Days. This is not a cheap addition to cash in on the success; although Brotherhood of Mutiliation can work on its own only together with its counterpart it achieves the full effect. They're similar and different; Together they form a giant rabbit hole, which will suck any reader who will simply read them, word after word, from left to right.
As I'm writin this, the novel has less than 200 ratings. This is a disgrace to its sheer quality. It needs to be popular. It needs to be read. Books that good don't come as often as we would have liked, and when they do many of them go by practically unnoticed. Don't allow for Last Days to go unnoticed. Pick it up! It's unsettling, frenetic, fascinating, haunting and hugely recommended!...more
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