a demon in my view

There really isn't much that scares me, although I will freely admit that this wasn't always the case. I had as many childhood fears as anyone else, and for every single thing I've ever been frightened of as a child, I can point to something very specific I saw on television as the cause.

Clowns? It. Water-based nature? Thanks so much, Jaws. Spiders? Arachnophobia, of course. (Did anyone go to bed after watching that movie without feeling creepies crawling all over them?) Serial killers under my bed? Screw you, Camp Sleepaway! (I still can't bear to dangle my hands or feet over the side of my bed.) Being slowly poisoned by my evil grandmother while she holds me and my three creepily blonde siblings captive in the attic of her massive mansion? Flowers in the Attic. (Beware the powdered sugar donuts, kids!) Joan Crawford? Mommie-freaking-Dearest.

Aside from the dangling my feet over the bed thing, adulthood has pretty much erased these childhood fears, but I guess it's a bit humbling to remember that I wasn't always so brave. I suppose that's why I love these awesome (albeit creepy) photographs taken from Joshua Hoffine's After Dark, My Sweet series. Firstly, they're visually rich yet minimally photoshopped. Secondly, they remind me of all the stuff I once believed to be true: spiders are freaky, attics are creepy, monsters live under my bed and under the stairs, and television is the devil....

(Via State of the Art)

weekly book review: the somnambulist, by jonathan barnes

"The many men, so beautiful. And they all dead did lie. And a thousand thousand slimy things lived on, and so did I."

For the most part, the books on my list of resolution reads are heavy, depressing, beastly things, and I found myself needing a break from all of that. Enter: The Somnambulist.

Set in Victorian-era London, The Somnambulist chronicles the (mis)adventures of Edward Moon, a magician past his prime whose true passion is solving crimes, and his sidekick The Somnambulist, a massive, milk-guzzling, hairless mute who is able to endure impaling with neither injury nor pain. Add a bizarre murder, an albino, a menagerie of circus freaks, prostitutes, assassins, poets, a creeeepy Utopian cult, a man for whom time passes backwards, a medium, and various assorted psychopaths and you have The Somnambulist - a novel that is part Frankenstein, part Sherlock Holmes, and one of the strangest, freakiest, funniest, and most overall enjoyable books I've read so far this year.

The narrator, both unnamed and unreliable, begins his tale with a warning: "This book has no literary merit whatsoever. It is a lurid piece of nonsense, convoluted, implausible, peopled by unconvincing characters, written in drearily pedestrian prose, frequently ridiculous and wilfully bizarre." And although Barnes' prose is far from pedestrian, all those other things are pretty much true. This, of course, is what makes it so much fun to read.

Full to overflowing with twist, turns, and red herrings, Barnes' story more than once risks becoming a bit too absurd, yet he somehow manages to pull it all off. Well, mostly pull it off. The only notable exception to this would be the ending, which wasn't quite as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be. Still, I found Barnes' debut to be a clever and wholly pleasant diversion, and its flaws easy enough to forgive.

In short - I liked it. I liked it a lot.

The Somnambulist

Jonathan Barnes

2007 (paperback), 353 pages

weekly book review, halloween edition: the terror, by dan simmons

On May 19th, 1845, British bombships Erebus and Terror set sail from the Thames River stocked will three years worth of food, 126 men, and the mission of seeking out the elusive Northwest Passage. Being that they are traveling on the first steam-powered vessels ever to explore the icy Arctic waters, the men think they have every reason to be confident, but by 1848 all passengers were presumed dead and neither ship was ever seen again. Unsuccessful expeditions charged with finding the missing ships produced clues as to how the men may have met their end, but to this day the individual fates of the men of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror are at best a speculation.


Dan Simmons blends what little is known of this doomed Arctic excursion into The Terror - a fictionalized account of Sir John Franklin's final voyage. Simmons' story opens on Francis Crozier, Captain of the HMS Terror, who has been landlocked in a frozen landscape for the better part of a year thanks to Franklin's poor decision making. Beset by ice, Crozier and his fellow captains had hoped for a summertime thaw that never came, and so are in the middle of their second winter spent trapped on their quickly failing ships. As if things were not bad enough, their dwindling food supply is feared to be contaminated by poisonous lead, several restless sailors are in danger of becoming mutinous, and they are being slowly stalked by a supernatural polar bear-ish monster that is methodically hunting and eating the crew. One-by-one, the men of Erebus and Terror begin to meet their terrible ends - victims of either the elements, their poisonous rations, or the strange monster that seems able to appear and disappear from the ice as if by magic. It eventually falls on Crozier to led these men off their ships and into the barren landscape, desperate for a chance at a salvation that seems impossible.

With Halloween just around the bend, my craving for a scary book led me to The Terror, despite approaching it with some hesitancy due to the fact that I'm not the biggest fan of historical fiction, frankly couldn't care less about nautical journeys, and - weighing in at a whopping 771 pages - The Terror looked like a beastly tome requiring the sort of time I wasn't really sure I was willing to commit. But it quickly became clear that the time it would take to tackle The Terror would be time well spent, as I quickly found myself drawn into the world of Crozier and his men.

Ultimately, The Terror reads like two separate novels - one a nautical disaster and the other a supernatural thriller -and while I can understand why some would see this as a point of critique, it totally worked for me. I loved the supernatural element every bit as much as I loved reading about the trials and tribulations of the doomed exhibition. For me, the presence of the monster really elevated a misadventure story into something much more imaginative and unique, and although it didn't terrify me exactly, it certainly provided me with a fair share of moments that made my hair stand on end.

All and all, I've never read anything quite like The Terror. It's a tale of survival, of adventure, of horror and of Inuit mythology, and it's also an immensely satisfying read. I can't recommend it enough.

The Terror
Dan Simmons
771 pages, 2007

books: 20th century ghosts, by joe hill

Ever since my first Girl Scout overnight camping trip I've been a sucker for scary stories, and Joe Hill's 20th Century Ghosts is one of the most original and entertaining collection of them I've read in quite some time. Some of the material here is certainly standard horror fare - "Best New Horror" is creepy and disgusting and "20th Century Ghost" is your basic ghost story, although a far better version of it - but Hill also tries his hand at science fiction, fantasy, and the surreal. Actually, several of the stories aren't scary at all - "Pop Art" is a touching story of an unlikely friendship and "Better Than Home" is a sweet father/son tale - and it's this versatility that I found to be one of the biggest strengths of the collection. Some of the most interesting moments for me were "And You Will Hear the Locust Sing" - a 21th Century version of Kafka's Metamorphosis, "Abraham's Boys" - a vampire story meets Frailty, "My Father's Mask" - the ending of which blew my mind, and Voluntary Committal - a brilliant novella that explores the old theme of Alice's rabbit hole and asks what would happen if a traveler could never return from it. After reading this collection it's easy to see how Hill was able to land a book deal so quickly, and after reading both 20th Century Ghosts and Heart-Shaped Box (his debut novel) it's clear that he's still a far better writer of short stories than novels. In any event, this is an excellent read and I'd strongly recommend it, even if horror isn't typically your thing.

20th Century Ghosts
Joe Hill
2007, 336 pages

books: a good and happy child

A Good and Happy Child (Justin Evans' debut) begins with George Davis, a first time father, who finds himself incapable of holding his newborn son. This inexplicable repulsion for his own child and the considerable strain it puts on his marriage sends him to a psychologist, who encourages him to journal in the hopes of understanding his unusual hangup. Through the journals, which consume the majority of the novel's plot line, Davis begins to recall a strange moment in his childhood shortly after his own father's mysterious death while chasing demons in Honduras. The journals recount strange visions Davis had as a child, "accidents" that frequently occurred around Davis and that threatened to get him committed, and the help he sought from his father's mystic friends who convinced him that his visions were demonic.

Truly intelligent horror is such a rarity, and although my biggest criticism of Evans' debut is that it's more unnerving than it is scary, there were certainly quite a few scenes that got under my skin. I mistakenly assumed that this would simply be a story about demonic possession, but it turned out to be something much more interesting - a freaky, tight little tale that explores both demons vs psychology, rationality vs spirituality, and perception vs reality. I've read several reviews by people who found the ending to be a bit frustrating, and would agree that it was anything but neat while the book had a tendency to ask more questions than it answered; however, for me, anyway, those are all good things.

Bottom line, I thought this was a very smart, spooky and enjoyable read. If you like The Exorcist you'd probably like it too. Holler if you want to borrow.

Up Next (assuming B&N has it in stock): I Love You, Beth Cooper, by Larry Doyle

books: 17 down, 7 to go: the road

The Road (Cormac McCarthy) - in masculine, Hemingwayesque prose that is often poetic in its fragmented simplicity - tells the story of a man and his son tenaciously clinging to survival, hope and one another set against a post-apocalyptic landscape. This book has gotten an awful lot of hype as of recent (as both a Pulitzer and a nod from Oprah will tend to do) and I'm not sure what I could say that hasn't already been said by countless others, so rather than ramble on, allow me to instead include two passages that together encapsulate everything that I found The Road to be: brutal, violent, and haunting, yet beautiful and tender all at once.

They scrabbled through the charred ruins of houses they would not have entered before. A corpse floating in the black water of a basement among the trash and rusting ductwork. He stood in a livingroom partly burned and open to the sky. The waterbuckled boards sloping away into the yard. Soggy volumes in a bookcase. He took one down and opened it and then put it back. Everything damp. Rotting. In a drawer he found a candle. No way to light it. He put it in his pocket. He walked out in the gray light and stood and he saw for a brief moment the absolute truth of the world. The cold relentless circling of the interstate earth. Darkness implacable. The blind dogs of the sun in their running. The crushing black vacuum of the universe. And somewhere two hunted animals trembling like groundfoxes in their cover. Borrowed time and borrowed world and borrowed eyes with which to sorrow it.

There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common providence in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes. So, he whispered to the sleeping boy, I have you.

Up Next: No One Belongs Here More Than You, by Miranda July

books: 10 down, 14 to go: heart-shaped box

Heart-Shaped Box (Joe Hill) tells the story of Jude Coyne, an aging rocker (think Ozzy Osbourne without the DTs) who buys a haunted suit off an Internet auction site. Although he doesn't initially believe the spectral claims, Coyne soon discovers that the suit is, in fact, haunted by an extraordinarily determined ghost who is hell-bent of revenge. Since I really, really hate spoilers I won't say much more plot-wise, however, do trust that twist and turns abound.

So now to the review:

Let me start by saying that I cannot imagine what it would be like to be a horror writer who is also the son of Stephen King. To write from under the shadow of that giant must be absurd, and that would undoubtedly explain why he chose to keep his family tree a secret for the first eight years of his literary career. Nonetheless, now that Hill's identity has been "outed," it seems to be impossible to not make comparisons to his famous father, which I hardly think is fair since this is only his first novel.

But you know I'm going to do it anyway.

Because I'm terribly out of the loop of the publishing world, I had no idea of Hill's true identity until I was thirty or so pages into Heart-Shaped Box, yet I sensed it immediately. King has this "nerdy guy writing about cool guys" thing that I've always noticed yet found to be endearing, and Hill's writing has that same vibe. A few chapters in, I ran to the Internet to research my suspicions, and - low and behold - I discovered that I am the literary equivalent of Sherlock Holmes. It read like a Stephen King novel since it sort of was - a "son of the Stephen King novel" if you will. And that would be my biggest criticism of the novel - Hill hasn't completely found his own, unique voice yet.

Nonetheless, Heart-Shaped Box was a great read. A tautly-written, creepy little piece that was fun to read and terrifically difficult to put down. And if you're nice, I'll even let you borrow it.

Up Next: Finn, by Jon Clinch

books: 2 down, 22 to go - the ruins

Okay, so here's the real post.

Since approximately 25% of my readership has already completed The Ruins I'll keep this one short. I'd cite a passage to "hook" you, but I couldn't really find one that wasn't in danger of spoiling something for those who haven't read it yet. Basically, it's about a bunch of young fools vacationing in Mexico who, due to their naive sense of adventure, a fierce language barrier, and evolution run amok, find themselves in a world of nature-based hurt. (Sort of like my day trip to Morocco when a carpet salesman tried to convince Nathan to take the "Berber discount," which meant he could make a trade: me for a Persian rug. Okay, it's nothing like that at all, but it's a good story nonetheless.)

So anyway, back to The Ruins. It's good. Disgusting and disturbing, but good. You should read it. (Perhaps not while eating, however.)

Up next (and on the strong recommendation of no fewer than three fifteen-year-old girls): My Sister's Keeper by Jodi Picoult