A.R. Morlan (1958–2016)

My video review of this book can be found here: https://youtu.be/cnwxwzr17-A

This was a very interesting and odd little horror novel. Following a fairly large cast of characters, this book tells the story of a small town in Wisconsin and the mystical force that's entwined through three generations of its history. The storytelling almost had a Stephen King feel in the sense that the book spends a lot of time on the interpersonal and intergenerational relationships among the characters. At times, there are some very wide spaces between paranormal events. However, I never felt my interest in the story wane, and the horror wasn't limited to the strictly supernatural. There were some very disturbing moments that were completely anchored in realism (speaking of which, huge trigger warning for suicide on this one).

I will mention that this book takes a little time to get going. If I were the type of reader that judges books based on their openings, I would have never made it past the prologue with this one. Said prologue takes place much earlier than most of the events of the rest of the story and had a more purple feel to its prose, at least when I was reading it initially. It also introduces us to an almost impossible number of characters all at once--six couples, plus the people observing them. I couldn't keep them straight. Once the first real chapter begins and you're placed more firmly in the "now" of the story, it becomes easier to follow, however, so please don't give up just based on the prologue alone.

That said, I do think that this book suffered a little bit from the drawn out way that the author tried to supply us with information. The prologue is a good example of this. We learn more about all those couples in the prologue later on, and at that point it's easier to keep track of who they are because they are anchored to other events and characters in the story. However, during the prologue, it really feels like we're privy to information we simply aren't equipped to appreciate. By the time I got to the point in the story where I would have appreciated the information I got in the prologue, I couldn't really remember it in complete detail. This sort of thing happened a few times throughout the book, where I was introduced to a character or concept that then disappeared for so long before it became relevant that I kind of forgot about it.

Along a similar vein, the author also had the tendency to describe things (particularly scenes of horror) very vaguely at first, then go back and fill in the blanks later. This happens a whole handful of times; the character would see something and in that moment, you would get only the most vague descriptors of the scene, almost as though you were viewing it through a smudged window and couldn't tell what you were actually looking at. Then, later, the character would see the sight again or relive the moment after the fact, and THEN you would get to find out what you were actually supposed to be looking at. I think some readers would probably really enjoy this (and I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it if it were only done once or twice in the book), but with as frequently as it happened, I found myself thinking, "Just TELL me what I'm looking at already!"

My other warning for this book is that it is, as one might expect from a horror novel, filled with horrible things. Most of the characters in this book aren't great people, so if you're the kind of person who needs to read books that reflect morals and set standards for the audience to follow, you're going to need to steer clear of this one. Now, much of the book is based around the guilt one of the main characters feels for his horrible actions, but that doesn't take away the fact that they are there, and that a lot of other disturbing things are happening in the story, as well. It also read as oddly misogynistic at times for a book that was written by a woman; by that, I mean that, with a couple notable exceptions, most of the female characters are either annoying, nagging wives that are simply put up with or are just in the story for sex. I don't think it was meant to portray women in any specific light one way or another, but the fact that only a few of the female characters were complex and interesting as compared to most of the male ones surprised me a bit coming from a female author.

That said, for a horror novel, it did exactly what I wanted it to do. It managed to disturb me and actually make me feel uncomfortable at times, which is honestly something that isn't too terribly easy to do anymore. I also appreciated the ending; while the first ending (pre-epilogue) might have been preferable in many ways, the epilogue really brought home the "unexpected but inevitable" quality that all good endings should have.

All in all, I would recommend this book to horror readers who are looking for a sometimes grisly character-based story about a town of flawed and messed up people (especially readers who like a touch of carnival horror).… (altro)