Growing Things

Growing Things by Paul Tremblay (2019)

I've never read Paul Tremblay before, but saw him speak on a panel at the Massachusetts Library Association Conference in May. I went to the panel because Peter Swanson was on it, but also enjoyed hearing from Paul Tremblay and Katherine Hall Page, and grabbed copies of all their recent/upcoming books. Tremblay's Growing Things was just released this week.

The collection begins with the title story, in which two girls and their father are holed up in their house while some sort of out-of-control plant seems to be taking over the world. We don't get a lot about the bigger picture since we're just hearing from the girls' perspective, but of course that makes it all the more creepy and mysterious. And as I look back at it now, I realize the characters have the same names - Merry and Marjorie - as those in the final story in the collection, "The Thirteenth Temple." I can't immediately see how they're related, but I understand from the notes at the end of the book that Tremblay often writes stories set in worlds he has created previously.

"Growing Things" isn't the only story with an apocalyptic feel. In "Where We All Will Be," Zane is troubled by his father's suddenly odd behavior and compulsion to get in the car and drive towards...something. Everyone else seems to be doing the same thing, but Zane seems to be immune, perhaps because his brain is somehow different from other people's as they learned when he was a kid. "It's Against the Law to Feed the Ducks" is about a family on vacation, told from the perspective of a young child who can see that something very strange is happening, and we can tell it's some sort of doomsday scenario, but what? In a way, I'd love to know more about what is actually going on in this stories, but I don't think any explanation could improve upon the feels of uncertainty and apprehension Tremblay cultivates.

While those may be my favorites in the collection (I do love a good apocalypse) there are others that were also especially...effective. I can't say I love them since they make me so uncomfortable but they certainly do what they set out to do and I have a great appreciation for that. "------------" (which is an annoying title for a story) begins with a man enjoying a day at the beach with his kids. A woman shows up, acting super familiar like they know each other. He tries to figure out where he knows her from, feeling a little uncomfortable as she acts more and more like they are close, and he kinda wishes his wife was there. She also acts familiar with the kids, like she's their mom, and as the guys packs up to leave, she's all like "wait! don't leave me behind!" and gets in the car with them. All this time he's asking himself who this woman is and why she's acting like he should know her. It's so very unsettling.

A few of the stories are pretty experimental in form. "A Haunted House is a Wheel Upon Which Some Are Broken" is told like a choose-your-own-adventure, and "Further Questions for the Somnambulist" is pages and pages of three columns of questions and I don't quite understand it. "Notes for 'The Barn in the Wild'" reminded me a bit of House of Leaves, with its diary format and footnotes and underlined and crossed out sentences, like you're hearing the story in real-time, a stream of consciousness, complete with tangents and asides.

Some of the stories worked more for me than others, as is always the case with a collection of short stories, but I could almost always at least appreciate it on some level. I read the collection fairly slowly over a couple of weeks and was very unsure how to rate it on Goodreads, which is also generally a problem with short story collections. But now as I look back and remind myself about everything that I read, it seems clear to me that it's a pretty solid 4 stars. I think it's worth pointing out that Tremblay is a high school math teacher when he's not writing, and I love that his day job is so incredibly different - English teacher we'd expect, but math? He's most well known for The Cabin at the End of the World which recently won the Bram Stoker award, and which I should probably consider reading. He's clearly a very talented horror writer and I'm sorry I missed him up until now. I'm glad I impulsively grabbed a copy of his book!

Nightingale

Nightingale by Amy Lukavics (2018)

It's the early 50s and June Hardie is not living up to her mother's idea of what a young woman should be. June is not interested in learning how to be a good wife, but prefers to work on her story about a woman who is abducted by aliens. She ends up in a mental hospital and the story goes back and forth between "the institution" and "days past" as we learn the full story of why she is there and what happens to her in the hospital.

As part of a business deal, her father wanted her to date a particular young man to better forge a relationship with his father. June wasn't crazy about Robert, but felt she had no choice but to go along with the scheme. Meanwhile, her mother was giving her lessons in cooking, shopping, and other domestic arts to better prepare her to be a housewife. Little did she know that June was secretly applying to a writing program to attend after her upcoming graduation.

Fast forward to the mental institution. June is convinced her parents have been replaced by beings who are not her parents. In the hospital she meets other young women with strange experiences, like her roommate Eleanor who is convinced that she died three years ago. Something at the hospital doesn't seem right to June. The girls are sometimes locked into their rooms for long periods, she's given drugs before even seeing the doctor, and when she does see the doctor he doesn't talk to her - the nurse Joya stands next to him and does all the talking. The threat of lobotomy hangs over everyone.

June was a smart, ambitious young woman who just wanted to be free from the narrow role her parents wanted her to play. She could picture herself at the writing retreat, living the kind of life that she wanted; it was so close but, alas, it was not to be. She was stifled at home and stifled in the hospital. She was convinced that her parents were not her parents, but wanted to cooperate with the hospital in order to secure her freedom at the same time that she suspected something sinister was going on. She didn't know if going along with what the hospital staff wanted would actually help or hurt her. It was ominous and realistic enough to be the sort of horror that feels all too possible.

The ending was very strange. A number of things happened late in the book, some of which were pretty bizarre and I still don't quite understand, some of which I liked and found satisfying. I can't actually criticize it because I think it's just my preference, and actually maybe made sense with the rest of the story. It really was a pretty good horror story!

I've read two other books by Amy Lukavics. Daughters Unto Devils remains a favorite, and although I didn't love The Women in the Walls as much, I still really enjoyed it. She's got one more novel that I haven't read, The Ravenous, which is second only to Daughters Unto Devils as far as the Goodreads average rating. I'm putting that one on my list to read as well!

Slade House

Slade House by David Mitchell (2015)

When I finished Catherine the Great, I wanted nothing more than to move on to a quick page-turning piece of fiction, and now that it's October I'm in the mood for horror.  A quick scroll through my To Read shelf on Goodreads reminded me of Slade House, which just happened to be available at the library. It was the perfect choice!

The story begins with a boy and his mum, Nathan and Rita Bishop, making their way to a party hosted by a Lady Grayer. They have a hard time finding Slade Alley, but finally they do and eventually locate a small iron door that lets them into the garden of the grand Slade House. They're greeted by Norah and her son Jonah. Nathan stays outside with Jonah, while his mother goes inside with the adults, but things in the yard start turning strange and, terrified, Jonah runs inside and as he goes upstairs he passes a series of portraits and sees that one of them is of him. In exactly the clothes he's wearing today. Things get stranger and stranger, and....well, the Bishops are never seen again. Nine years later, yet another person is lured in, and the cycle continues.

I won't say much else about the story, as that's something you should discover for yourself, except to note that there was a witness to the Bishops' disappearance which led to some speculation about what was going on there. But it takes place in the contemporary world so of course people are skeptical about anything supernatural and I kind of love that about stories like this. It makes it all the more realistic and creepy to me.

The book was so atmospheric - perfect for a gray fall day - and the characters are well developed so that you really feel for them and don't want a terrible fate to befall them. (It will though. Sorry.) This is a very short book, and each chapter focuses on a different character so I was impressed at how well we got to know each of them. What they experienced was creepy and scary, and they would finally realize what was happening only when it was too late to stop it. It was just what I was looking for.

I've read only one other book by David Mitchell - Black Swan Green, which I read way back in 2007 and didn't post about here. I remember liking it a lot, but it was a very different kind of book. I'd definitely read this author again!

Do you have any good creepy fall stories to recommend?

The Outsider

The Outsider by Stephen King (2018)

A child is horribly murdered and mutilated, and all evidence on the scene points to an unlikely suspect - local Little League coach and all-around great guy Terry Maitland. However, Maitland also has an air-tight alibi. He was out of town with several of his teacher colleagues at a conference and was even caught on film at right around the time the child was killed. But how can you argue with DNA evidence? Detective Ralph Anderson and his colleagues don't think you can, but after arresting Maitland publicly and learning of his alibi, he has a lot to answer for. This is just the beginning of Stephen King's newest novel, which goes on for over 500 pages and ends up somewhere unexpected.

Somehow, I thought this book was more of a crime/mystery novel than traditional Stephen King fare. It's definitely about a crime, but things got pretty weird quickly. Without giving too much away (because everything I describe above happens very early) I will mention that the story brings in some elements inspired by folklore which can, of course, be incredibly creepy and I like how it was used here. There was also a real-life tragic event that happened in the past at a tourist attraction which also lent quite a creepy feeling to the story.

If you've read King's Bill Hodges trilogy you'll recognize one character, Holly Gibney, who is intriguing enough in her own right to make me want to finally pick those books up. As always, King seems to pull his characters out of real life, each one fully-formed and multi-dimensional as people you see every day. I don't know how he does this. They're all imperfect - some more than others - and watching Ralph Anderson grapple to explain something inexplicable, or Marcy Maitland try to reconcile her husband with the horrible person who committed a violent crime was satisfying, but familiar to anyone who's read Stephen King before.

The Outsider is pretty long, and I spent a full week and a half reading it, but it was well worth the ride. I can't exactly say I enjoyed it, as so much of it made me feel rather uncomfortable and a bit icky, but it was so well crafted and satisfying and I definitely liked spending time with these characters as they tried to unravel this strange mystery.

The Women in the Walls

The Women in the Walls by Amy Lukavics (2016)

Lucy has grown up in a remote Victorian mansion with her father, aunt Penelope, and cousin Margaret. Lucy and Margaret are homeschooled, and the estate is a frequent meeting place for the country club their family is involved with. Lucy's mother died when she was still a little kid, so she has grown up with Penelope as a mother figure. But as the novel opens, Penelope wanders into the woods and disappears and Lucy learns there is a lot about her aunt - and the house where she has grown up - that she doesn't know.

All of the relationships in this book are complicated and uncertain and filled with secrets. It made me feel like I didn't know who to trust, or who Lucy should trust. In true horror novel fashion, things are far weirder and scarier than they appear and not everyone is going to get out of here alive.

I loved the setting and the atmosphere of this novel. Old, isolated Victorian mansion with dark secrets? Yes, please! Although the story is contemporary, Lukavics gives it a timeless quality that added to the overall dark creepy feeling. There is no mention of computers or cell phones until quite late in the story and even those references were minimal. Earlier mention of Lucy doing research must have meant that she was using the internet, but Lukavics carefully didn't say that.

We all have different things that scare us and I think her last book, Daughters Unto Devils, pushed more of my particular horror-buttons. Still, this worked quite well as a horror novel and I was surprised a few times when I really thought about the fact that it is written for teens. There is a part late in the book that is shockingly, horrifically gross. Just before it there was something that hinted at what was coming but I thought "Oh no, she won't go there." But she went there! I don't even know if I liked or disliked certain parts of this novel, but they were certainly effective at conveying horror. Wow.

This is a very quick-to-read, well-crafted, true horror novel - which you don't see nearly enough in teen fiction. I think Daughters Unto Devils is still my favorite (I gave it 5 stars and it was my favorite book I read last year) but this was a great follow-up!

Horrorstör

Horrorstör by Grady Hendrix (2014)

It may look like an IKEA catalog, but it's actually a very clever and funny horror novel that takes place in a store called Orsk. ("Questions? Just Orsk!") Orsk is an IKEA-like store (though IKEA does also exist in this world), complete with labyrinthine showrooms, assemble-it-yourself furniture, and meatballs. But there's something more going on in the Cleveland Orsk store, and manager Basil is determined to figure out what. Thinking that someone is sneaking in after hours and wreaking havoc, he recruits Amy and Ruth Anne to stay overnight and investigate.

Basil is super uptight and is always quoting the corporate dogma, while Amy is just biding her time until she can get transferred to another store. I'd say Amy is in her 20s probably. Ruth Anne is in her 40s, doesn't seem to have much going on outside of her job, and is eternally optimistic and pleasant. They aren't very chummy with each other and make an unlikely team, and of course they have no idea what they're really in for. (Hint: it's much more sinister than what they expect.)

Look, this isn't going to win any literary awards. The plot is not completely without holes, the characters aren't terribly well-developed, and the writing can be a bit clunky in spots. But it's very good at what it is, and I kind of loved it. I love satire and horror and comedy and it's all of those things. But it's the presentation that really gives it that extra special something. As I pointed out earlier, it looks like an IKEA catalog from the outside, but that design carries through the book. Each chapter begins with a catalog page highlighting a particular piece of furniture such as the Brooka, Liripip, and Hügga, complete with descriptions and available colors and they are all relevant to the story. The furniture and catalog copy become more...unusual as the story progresses.

It's not super-scary, but I do have a special love for and fear of creepy buildings so it worked for me on a horror level even while I laughed at the Orsk corporate culture. I always want to be reading horror in October, and I'm so glad I happened to have some time between library books to finally pick up this book that's been sitting on my shelf for a couple of years now. It's not my last horror novel of this month either - I'll be posting about a newly-released teen horror novel sometime soon!

Throwback Thursday: The Amityville Horror

In which I share vague recollections of books I read long ago that have stuck with me.

One of the books I read over and over again in high school was Jay Anson's allegedly-true ghost story, The Amityville Horror. This cover on the left is the edition that I read, complete with flies. In fact, there were illustrations of flies throughout the book at the beginning of each chapter. It was thrilling and disgusting at the same time.

In late 1974, a guy murdered six members of his family in a house in Amityville, and about a year later another family moved in. After about a month the family left, claiming they were terrorized by paranormal phenomena. They did meet with Jay Anson, but although he wrote this whole book about the experience, none of it was ever substantiated. (Libraries in my network have it shelved in 133 with paranormal phenomena, except for one brazen library that has it in the fiction section.)

Whether true or not, it was terrifying to read and I savored every bit of it as the Lutz family encountered strange sounds and smells and had nightmares and experienced all sorts of increasingly creepy phenomena. I don't remember whether or not I actually believed that it was true, but I'm sure that I wanted to believe it. I cannot explain why, but when I was a kid I really wanted things like ghosts and haunted houses to be real. It is also true that I had nightmares and frequently woke up in the middle of the night and had to walk around the house in the dark to check and make sure that everything was ok and it wasn't on fire or anything. So really, I just tortured myself for reasons that elude me now.

Years later my mother's house, the very old house that I grew up in, became mysteriously infested with flies. All year round, just like the Amityville house. It was pretty gross to be sure, but man, having read The Amityville Horror so many times, it was also downright creepy.

Throwback Thursday: Off Season

In which I share vague recollections of books I read long ago that have stuck with me.

Last night a teenage girl came into the library looking for books with lots of graphic violence in them, specifically with psycho killers if possible. This request made me think about some of the books I read when I was in high school and primarily read horror.

One that has never quite left me is Off Season by Jack Ketchum, a book I'm pretty sure I read more than once. First published in 1980, it's about a family of cannibals in Maine who feed on tourists. Of course. I only remember that it was incredibly graphic on the killing and eating details, which was quite thrilling to me at the time.

Apparently it was quite controversial and shocking at the time, although the publisher made Ketchum remove some parts, but it was re-released in the late 1990s in an unedited version. So I guess the edition I read in the 80s was the edited version, though I recall it being quite graphic. I suppose I could hunt down the more recent version to read, but...I'll probably pass. I still like horror, but my days of enjoying gratuitous violence just for the shock value are over.

The Library at Mount Char

The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins (2015)

The old neighborhood isn't what it used to be. On a day that Carolyn only remembers as "adoption day" she was taken to live with a man known as Father. She and the other children used to have regular parents, but they're all dead. The entire neighborhood is now inhabited by these "dead ones" who go about their daily lives, repeating automatic motions and saying the same phrases over and over. Father and his children (who became known as librarians) lived for years at the Library, but now he's missing and the librarians can't come within a certain radius of the house. Carolyn is resorting to going in the surrounding areas and fraternizing with Americans for help. If this all sounds confusing and strange, it is.

Each of Father's children is devoted to one particular catalog, or subject area. Carolyn's is languages, so she knows every language that has ever existed. Michael's is animals, so he spends most of his time out in the wilderness acting as the animals do. Jennifer's catalog is healing, and David's is war and murder. In all there were twelve children, one for each catalog, and each was forbidden to read from another's catalog. Their relationships with one another were weird and volatile and it wasn't unusual for one to murder another. Did I mention the resurrections? Jennifer, the healer, could bring anyone back to life, so even murder didn't necessarily ruin a relationship.

There's a lot to this story and it's hard to know even what to talk about. The story sounded great when I heard about it, especially with the library theme, but I think it was the gorgeous cover that ultimately drew me in. I first read about it in the horror section of a review journal and there's not enough horror out there so I was very happy to hear about a horror novel from a new author. I'm using a loose definition of horror here; it might be more fantasy, and it's definitely weird and strange but wasn't terribly scary. At least not until late in the book. I read a blurb that said it was like if Neil Gaiman and Joe Hill wrote a book together, and I think that was a very apt description.

The whole idea is very unusual. The characters live in a strange world that exists within ours. Our world is what it is, but all this is happening too, (mostly) unbeknownst to regular people like us.  So much happens here! The story gets bigger and bigger as it goes on, which sort of reminded me of 14 by Peter Clines, though the story itself is pretty different.

The characters were really screwed up and some were kind of scary, but I also felt really awful for them. David was very happy and fun-loving as a kid until he was made into a murderer. Because the librarians aren't really in tune with American culture, he spends much of the book dressed in an Israeli flak jacket and a pink tutu, but it doesn't make him less cruel or terrifying.  Michael can barely speak because he's most comfortable communicating with animals. He's very sensitive and has the closest relationship to Carolyn. Margaret spent a ton of time in the forgotten lands, which is where dead people go, I think. She was murdered again and again and stank of rot from being dead so much. She and David were romantically involved (though "romantic" doesn't seem like the right word) and they were really into rough sex. As in, they would need to be resurrected afterward. Jennifer, the healer, was high all the time. I loved Carolyn - she was smart, strong, and calculating. I really underestimated her at first, as did everyone else in the book, I think. She was the one who most understood American culture, but even so she was clearly not part of our world. Another great character was Steve, a regular guy who Carolyn ended up bringing into their situation and I really liked seeing his perspective on this whole crazy business.

This novel is just really frigging weird, and I mean that in the best way possible. I was fascinated by this world, and never knew what would happen next. This is the author's debut novel (his past books are all computer manuals) and he is working on more. According to his website, the next novels are called Dog Blog and That Isn't a Giraffe, and I'll definitely be keeping an eye out for them. If you like horror or dark fantasy, you should definitely consider trying The Library at Mount Char.

Daughters Unto Devils

Daughters Unto Devils by Amy Lukavics (2015)

Are you looking for a good Halloween read? Look no further than this debut teen novel that was just released last month. It has been described as Laura Ingalls Wilder's worst nightmare, and I concur. It's deliciously terrifying! And I love that cover. Why are obscured faces so incredibly creepy?

Sixteen-year-old Amanda and her parents and four brothers and sisters need to leave the mountain before winter. Last year they barely made it through, and something bad and unnamed happened to Amanda that she hasn't recovered from. So they pack up and go to the prairie to find an abandoned cabin for their new home. The cabin they find is comfortably large, but needs work. It appears that someone had slaughtered an ox inside, leaving the walls covered in blood. Something is not right on the prairie. But Amanda has no time to think of that, because a much more immediate problem is the baby she is carrying.

I read this in about a day. It is short and simple to read, but full of creepiness and terror that was all distressingly easy to visualize. The descriptions weren't enough to bog you down, but were cinematic in their simplicity. The story is kind of a slow build; you don't know what's wrong, just that something is, and it's steadily approaching. It begins at a moderate pace but intensifies rapidly, making it awfully hard to stop. I mean, you can't just put it down when such danger is lurking. That would be irresponsible.

Amanda is so tortured. She knows she is evil because of this thing that happened last winter and she doesn't want to be evil, but she feels that it's too late and all is lost. All she can do is try to minimize the damage. But her close relationship with one of her sisters has disintegrated, and she can't imagine telling her parents about her pregnancy though she doesn't have much of a choice. One of the most unsettling aspects of this novel is that Amanda is so recognizable as a regular teenage girl, but is stuck in such an out-of-the-ordinary situation.

I love that this book takes place in early America, which is under-represented in fiction in general, but especially in horror. Somehow that time period is even more scary, because things were so dangerous. I read all of the Little House books, and I don't care how much Laura Ingalls Wilder tried to idealize her childhood, things were rough!

Don't let this one pass you by. Here's hoping that Amy Lukavics will write more books like this, and soon!

Gerald's Game

Gerald's Game by Stephen King (1992)

Jessie Burlingame and her husband Gerald slip off to their cabin in the woods for some sexytimes, but when Gerald is accidentally killed Jessie is left hand-cuffed to the bed with no way to escape and only her own thoughts to keep her company. Or, maybe not.

As Jessie lies uncomfortably on the bed for hours, her mind begins to drift back to one summer when something so terrible happened she hasn't let herself even think of it until now. A small chorus of voices in her head argue with each other and vie for her attention as she comes to grips with her both her past and her present.

Gerald's Game is not a book of action so much as one of internal struggle and growth. Most of the book takes place in Jessie's head as she thinks about her husband, her father, her therapist, and her old friend Ruth. Ruth and Nora, the therapist, are a couple of the voices she hears in her head, along with an alter-ego she thinks of as Goodwife Burlingame.

But that's not to say that the novel is all about thinking. Things do happen, and they are creepy and sometimes downright gruesome. Jessie makes attempts to relieve her worsening thirst and, of course, to free herself from the handcuffs. She also has visitors, but the less said about those the better. You'll just have to read it yourself.

I've had a tough time reading lately, possibly because of so many distractions in my life right now, which is why I turned to Stephen King. This is one of his books I missed because it came out soon after I went to college and discovered that there are, in fact, other authors out there. I didn't read anything of his for quite a while and now I'm trying to catch up. I think it was a good book to pick at the time and I'm glad I read it, but it's definitely not one of my favorites. I really appreciated the story of Jessie coming to grips with her childhood trauma, and trying to save her own life, but I do like a little more action in a story.

Heart-Shaped Box

Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill (2007)

Aging rock star Judas Coyne has a pretty large collection of oddities, so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale, he impulsively decides to add it to his collection. Soon, the package arrives: a heart-shaped box containing an old-fashioned suit. Judas stashes it in his closet and goes about his life with his 20-something girlfriend Georgia, but the suit - and its former inhabitant - will not be ignored.

Surprise: Judas finding this sale was not a coincidence. It turns out he has a connection to this unhappy ghost, and now he and Georgia must try to make things right and get this creepy-ass thing off their backs. Not only is this a ghost story, but it's also a road-trip story and I cannot imagine a better combination.

I always tell people that Joe Hill has a different style than his father, Stephen King, but Hill's debut reminds me a lot of old-school King. This character-driven novel stars a very imperfect man, but one I came to sympathize with nonetheless. The creepy parts were so very well done, employing some of the worst parts of my nightmares, and I am literally referring to nightmares I have had. Joe Hill, how did you know?
I won't ruin it for you to detail the bits of this book that made my blood run a bit cold, but just trust me that they were there.

I've been reading horror since I was about twelve, and I no longer believe in the supernatural as I did when I was a kid. But although I don't actually get scared by horror anymore, I remember when I did believe in ghosts and, man, there were moments in this story that I found delicious because they were so perfect. Had I read this back when I first started reading horror it would have positively kept me up all night in terror, but now it just kept me up because I couldn't stop reading it. It was so much creepy fun!

Although I haven't really been able to get into Locke & Key, I find Hill's other books just perfect for me so now I'm looking forward to finally reading his newest novel, NOS4A2. I read Heart-Shaped Box for my TBR Pile Challenge and also my book group. I hope everyone else in book group likes it as much as I did!

Revival

Revival by Stephen King (2014)

When Jamie Morton was just a kid in the 1960s, he was playing with toy soldiers in the driveway one day when a shadow fell over him. He looked up and saw the man he came to know as Pastor Charlie Jacobs, a man whose shadow would remain over Jamie even decades later.

Jamie grew up to become a musician and a drug addict, and he went through rough times and lost people close to him. Charlie also experienced loss and difficult times, but he always retained a fascination with electricity, and every time Jamie saw him he was using his strange electrical power in different ways. Whether he was using it for cheap tricks or to heal members of his new congregation he was obviously working towards something bigger, and the more Jamie learned the more fearful he became.

The way Stephen King describes his characters and their lives always brings me back to my childhood and, in fact, I read this while in Maine at my sister's house over Thanksgiving. (My family is just as rural and redneck as King's characters. We went skeet shooting after Thanksgiving dinner. No lie.) If you aren't from Maine, or somewhere similarly rural, you might not appreciate just how true to life his writing is. But he really gets it. I know Stephen King has lived his entire life in Maine, but he's more educated and far more wealthy than the people he's writing about, yet I don't think he's let his fame change him.

Science and religion are woven together through Charlie's evolving worldview. Early on, he explains religion as an extension of science because "science is finite." Later, after he has lost his faith, he uses religion as a cover because people will buy into it more than his weird science. It's sadly true, actually - people aren't willing to accept science they don't understand, yet they are willing to accept religious ideas that are much more far-fetched because of their faith. It's really kind of bizarre when you think about it.

I also liked the the concept of a "fifth business," someone who just keeps popping up at random times over the years, which is what Charlie Jacobs was to Jamie Morton. The very idea is somehow ominous, and here it was more so because Jamie knew that Charlie was up to something strange. I could kind of see where the story was going before it got there, but much about it was quite different than I expected. Through a lot of the book I kept thinking that it wasn't exactly a horror novel, but it is. It definitely is. Things happened near the end that made my blood run cold.

And I will leave you with that. It's Stephen King, and it's good Stephen King.

The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)

A strange house sits nestled in the hills outside of a town called Hillsdale. Rumors of its sinister history have caught the attention of a Dr. Montague who rents out the house in hopes of scientifically studying the phenomena. He carefully chooses guests to accompany him, including a relation of the family who own the house. At first it seems like a lark, and the guests all spend time frolicking around and getting to know each other, but soon they begin having experiences they cannot explain away, and their stay turns from fun to terrifying.

Considered a classic in haunted house literature, Jackson's novel contains all the best elements of success: an imposing structure with a confusing layout, a history of mysterious deaths in the original family, unexplained occurrences, standoffish townspeople, and characters who might not be quite healthy mentally.

It is this psychological element that is most powerful in any horror story, and here it was used to its best advantage. The central character is Eleanor, a 32-year-old woman who has spent the last 11 years taking care of her sick mother. Her character is introduced with this statement: "The only person in the world she genuinely hated, now that her mother was dead, was her sister." Then, in a restaurant when Eleanor observes a small girl refusing to drink out of a cup that's not the one she uses at home: "Don't do it, Eleanor told the little girl; insist on your cup of stars; once they have trapped you into being like everyone else you will never see your cup of stars again; don't do it; and the little girl glanced at her, and smiled a little subtle, dimpling, wholly comprehending smile, and shook her head stubbornly at the glass. Brave girl, Eleanor thought; wise, brave girl."

This scene was very telling. Eleanor is trapped in her narrow little life and jumps at the chance to escape it to visit Hill House. Unfortunately, her desperation makes her particularly vulnerable to the personalities and forces around her there. She quickly forms a friendship with Theodora, the other young woman who has been invited, but their relationship becomes troubled as the story progresses, partly due to the attractive young Luke who Eleanor seems fond of. Her growing insecurities and the increasingly unnerving events at the house converge upon her to her detriment. Her character was delightfully complex, simultaneously irritating and sympathetic.

Although I didn't love The Haunting of Hill House as much as We Have Always Lived in the Castle, I still found it an excellent creepy tale and will certainly try more of Shirley Jackson's books in the future.  I should also mention how much I like this particular edition, with the orange and black cover and pages edged in black. I couldn't get through Guillermo Del Toro's series introduction unfortunately, but thought the other introduction by Laura Miller to be quite interesting (but read it after reading the book because there are spoilers.) If you like creepy or psychological stories, definitely give this one a try!

14

14 by Peter Clines (2012)

Nate Tucker has a crappy data entry job and shares a house with a few roommates. When they all decide to part ways, he happens on a great deal for an apartment. It's a little too good. He moves in, starts meeting his neighbors, and begins to notice very odd things. Like, green cockroaches with extra legs. A light fixture in his kitchen that turns any bulb into a black light. Mysterious padlocked doors. As he visits the other apartments in the building it just gets weirder and weirder and soon Nate is organizing a group of newfound friends on a quest to investigate their strange building. They find way more than they ever expected.

I heard about this book last year, when it got great reviews and made some "best horror books of the year" lists. I knew it was about a creepy apartment building, but it is so much more than that. Of course I can't tell you what because that would ruin it. But it just got better and better as the residents tried to solve the mystery of their building, and it goes places that I never expected. A quote on the cover compares it to the show Lost, and I can see why. There are lots of little mysteries that don't seem to relate to each other, but you know that somehow they're all part of something larger. It was just riveting.

One of my favorite things about the novel was that I really felt the characters come together and form friendships through the course of their adventure. And they were good characters who I was rooting for (most of them, anyhow.) Of course it was also a great mystery that was quite creepy in parts, with strong elements of science fiction and even steampunk. Everything about it was very compelling and I found it difficult to put down.

Despite the press it got last year, I don't know that this is very widely read. However, I'll certainly be recommending it. It's like a cross between Lost and the best aspects of House of Leaves, but still unusual and original. Really fantastic!

I just want to briefly mention the publisher, Permuted Press (tagline: "Enjoy the apocalypse.") I'd never heard of them before, but had great fun looking at all the covers and titles featured in the back of 14 and on their website. I would have been all over these books when I was a teenager. Some of them look awesome now. Judging totally on how they look though, I'd say that 14 is of a higher caliber than most of the books. But if you like horror, definitely take a look.

House of Leaves

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (2000)

This strange novel is a book within a book, and within the inner book is a documentary. The subject of the documentary is a house that's bigger on the inside, and the story of one family who was unfortunate enough to move into the house. But maybe I should back up a bit. The story is about a guy named Johnny Truant who stumbles upon an immense collection of writings by a dead guy named Zampano who was writing a book about a documentary called The Navidson Record. As Johnny puts together all the bits of writing, along with footnotes, appendices, and other periphery material he is drawn into a dark descent paralleling the Navidson family who made a documentary about their strange and otherworldly house. Are you confused yet? If not, then I'm not describing this accurately, but that's the best I can do.

House of Leaves has been on my to-read list for years. It's not widely known but has a cult following and every now and then I'll read some mention of it or see it listed among somebody's favorite horror novels. I'm glad I finally got to it, though I didn't find it as earth-shattering as some people have.

Because the bulk of the book is describing a documentary it seems in a way more real. It's an interesting device. On the other hand, because Karen and Will Navidson are just characters in a documentary that is being described, they remain distant. Also contributing to this are the many extensive footnotes and quotes from scholarly sources (which of course are fake.) Again, it makes it seem more real in a way, but distant and clinical, so it wasn't as scary as if you were hearing the story first hand and had access to the characters' thoughts.

Although my edition is 700 pages, the main part is really only about 530. The rest is appendices (and even an index, which I actually used at least once) and I read some of the material in the appendices but not all. There's a lengthy selection of letters to Johnny Truant from his mother, which I mostly read, and a lot of poetry that I skipped, mostly because I don't know why it's there or who supposedly wrote it.

Of that 530 pages, a lot of it is taken up by footnotes, or weirdness like mostly blank pages with just a few words in the center. Or not the center. The text is frequently arranged quite creatively. I sort of liked that, though I'm not sure I understand the significance of those arrangements. It was the footnotes and quotes from scholarly sources (or celebrities) that made it start feeling very encumbered. All the extraneous matter serves to illustrate how much The Navidson Record became a part of popular and academic culture, but reading through it was sometimes cumbersome. I think you could skip most of that and just read the main text and just the footnotes that make up Johnny Truant's story, which is almost a novel in itself.

I'm glad I finally read House of Leaves, but it didn't quite live up to the hype for me. I kept hearing that it was terrifying, but didn't find it so. Conceptually, it is creepy and mysterious, but the devices Danielewski used to make the story more believable lessened the potential to be scary to me.

Carrie

Carrie by Stephen King (1974)

I think everyone is familiar with this classic story of a high school outcast using the powers of her mind to get back at those who have bullied her too many times. In high school I read Carrie at least a handful of times and have always remembered that famous shower scene vividly. I loved everything by Stephen King (I grew up in Maine, after all) but kept coming back to this one. It's now been over twenty years since I last read it, although not long ago I finally saw the movie. I was afraid a movie that old wouldn't stand up over time (I was disappointed when I finally saw "Children of the Corn" a few years ago) but I enjoyed it and found Carrie's mother perfectly terrifying, even more so than I remember from the book.

Reading it again after all this time was a lot of fun. First, it really brought home the degree to which Stephen King's writing has gotten more sophisticated. Carrie is character-driven for sure, but nobody is fleshed out as much as in his more recent books. It's forgivable though, because it's just such a great story.

More importantly, it holds up over time and is probably the best book about bullying EVER. It was written way before bullying became the hot issue it is today and I think it's a lot better than recent books I've read on that theme. Carrie's classmates are wonderfully complicated, some clearly bullies and others just going along with the crowd. Sue Snell is an incredibly realistic character - as you may remember she is the one who felt terrible after the whole "plug it up" incident in the locker room, and convinced her boyfriend to ask Carrie to prom. He, too, was pretty nice about the whole thing and sympathetic to Carrie. But then of course the pig blood happened and all his and Sue's efforts were for naught.

I remembered Carrie's mother as being fanatically religious and it was only upon this rereading that I realized she wasn't so much religious as she was a raving lunatic. I mean, Margaret White thought that sex even within marriage was a horrible sin. No church on earth would condone this woman's views.

Had this been written more recently, King surely would have fleshed out Margaret White's background more and dwelled upon the confining nature of Carrie's life in that household, but we got enough of it for the story to be effective. I had forgotten that the novel was structured to include excerpts from some fake books about the incidents of Prom Night and about Carrie's life, so that was fun to rediscover. Although Carrie was written in the late 70s (and rescued from the trash by Tabitha King) it is a timeless story that is still good and will hold up for years to come.

Horns

Horns by Joe Hill (2010)

Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk, doing terrible things. When he wakes up in the morning he finds that his horrible hangover is accompanied by another strange by-product of his evening: a pair of horns growing out of his head. He soon finds the horns come with a strange power. Everyone he speaks to tells him their secret, private urges, whether he wants to hear them or not. As Ig tries to understand what has become of him, the reader learns about his past : his upbringing, how he fell in love with his girlfriend Merrin, and her violent murder, of which he was accused. As Ig falls deeper into the rabbit hole, so the reader falls with him becoming completely caught up in this twisted, tortured tale coming from one of the most talented writers of horror today.

Initially, I found the whole premise of this book a little ridiculous. But I kept hearing about how good it was and I'm so glad I finally folded and picked up a copy. It was strange and weird and a little creepy, and I never was able to predict where it was going.

For those of you unfamiliar with Joe Hill, you should know that his father is Stephen King, and the apple has not fallen far from the tree. Hill has a style all his own, but now and then I was reminded of King, perhaps by the sympathetic way the characters were portrayed - King is a master at character development and apparently that trait has been passed down to the next generation. I wanted the best for Ig, who was a decent guy - a very young guy, even - who really needed something good to happen to him. Although Ignatius was the one sprouting horns, he wasn't the real devil here and I loved every moment of that character's true nature coming to light.

Horns isn't a happy story, nor is it realistic (obviously), but if you're in the mood for some twisted fun you could do much worse. The movie is being filmed now, and stars Daniel Radcliffe as Ig, a casting choice which I think just might be brilliant.

Hill's collection of short stories, 20th Century Ghosts, was fantastic and I liked the first volume of his graphic novel series Locke and Key, though the art style wasn't exactly to my taste. After also enjoying Horns a great deal, I might be hooked. Now I'm hoping to read Hill's previous novel Heart-Shaped Box, and I'll be looking out for the forthcoming NOS4A2.