Twelve-year-old Michelle isn't sure what to expect when her family moves from Boston to the tiny seaside village of Paradise Point. She knows her father, Dr. Cal Pendleton, is reeling from a mistake he made, a mistake which caused a young boy to die during surgery. Michelle's mother, June, is very pregnant, and can't wait to resume her career as an artist.After the mishap in Boston, Cal meets Dr. Josiah Carson, the elderly doctor who accompanied the doomed boy from Paradise Point to Boston. Dr. Carson seems a kindly enough old gent, and Cal doesn't think too long before accepting the offer "Dr Joe" proposes: Cal will buy out Dr Carson's practice, as well as the huge Victorian house that has been in his family for generations, and move from Boston to the idyllic small town.The house is perfect. There's a small outbuilding June can use for her painting, and Michelle falls in love with a small, upstairs corner bedroom with lots of windows. As she's unpacking, Michelle finds a hidden treasure. In the back of her closet, there's an antique doll. She falls in love with the doll, whom she promptly names Amanda. As it turns out, there was an Amanda who lived in Paradise Point long ago, a twelve-year-old blind girl who was mocked by her classmates, until she plunged to her death from a seaside cliff. This same Amanda is rumored to roam Paradise Point to this day, a shadowy form dressed all in black. On a picnic with some new school friends, Michelle suffers a fall from a path up the bluff, leaving her mostly lame in her left leg. Most of her new classmates mock her when she comes back to school. She soon makes a new friend named Amanda, a blind girl dressed all in black, who always appears in a thick cloud of fog. Amanda becomes Michelle's only friend. And people start to die.This book grabbed me early--when Michelle discovers the doll--and never let go. This isn't really a book with basic, workaday narrative intercut with big "GOTCHA" moments. John Saul maintains a constant level of menace and suspense throughout. There is something just palpably wrong with Paradise Point, with its people, and with the small cemetery next to Michelle's new home. A few decent people live in town--a big-hearted teacher and her psychologist boyfriend, and one girl who never stops trying to be Michelle's friend--but most people don't seem to trust the new doctor, especially when his daughter starts talking about Amanda. We get the impression that Michelle is not the first Paradise Point resident to see Amanda. Even when things seem okay for awhile, the flat-out wrongness of the place flows just beneath the surface. When "The Exorcist" was released in theaters, there were disturbing sounds that didn't match the action onscreen--swarms of angry bees, for example. Viewers couldn't really pick out the sound, but it was disconcerting nonetheless. John Saul's beautifully sinister narrative serves the same purpose here. The sun may be shining, and people may be enjoying themselves, but you can never quite trust that the peace will last. The shadows are too omnipresent for us to let down our guard. I've read a number of John Saul novels over the past few months. I have enjoyed some of them more than others. "Comes the Blind Fury" is by far my favorite. The story keeps moving forward, as if being drawn to an inevitable conclusion. The suspense is steady, and Michelle makes an excellent ingenue heroine, cruelly scorned by her friends, but with a newfound cruelty within herself, something she can neither understand nor control.This is a lovely read.Highly recommended.
Amanda net twaalf jaar. Ze was een klein, tenger meisje. Altijd in het zwart gekleed. Het belangrijkste ze was blind. Ze liep met haar stok tastend over het pad langs de kust over de rotsen.Toen kwamen de kinderen. Ze treiterden haar en Amanda wilde daar weg. Ze vluchtte en toen was er niets meer. Geen grond niets...Honderd jaar later verhuist Michelle met haar stiefouders naar Paradise Point. Ze is twaalf en altijd vrolijk. En verheugd zich op haar nieuwe bestaan in een nieuwe omgeving. Maar dan komt de mist op en op raadselachtige wijze de kinderen van Paradise point om het leven komen. Michelle weet niet wat er gebeurt, maar weet dat iets haar in zijn greep houdt.---Een boek met spanning en verrassing vanaf het begin. Het einde laat een open einde achter waardoor je met vragen achterblijft. Het boek in het Nederlands gelezen. Het is zeker een aanwinst voor mijn boekenkast. Zoals de meeste boeken van John Saul.De vier sterren zijn omdat de spanning oploopt, het verhaal lekker leest en het verhaal je in zijn greep houdt. De personages leer je oppervlakkig maar genoeg kennen om emoties te voelen. ---John Saul is geboren in 1942 in Pasadena, Californië. Hij groeide op in Whittier en haalde zijn diploma in 1959 van de Whittier High School.Na verschillende opleidingen aan net zoveel beroepsopleidingen te hebben gevolgd zonder het behalen van een diploma of graad, besloot hij van school te gaan en auteur te worden. In de daarop 15 jaar schreef Saul verschillende manuscripten en had hij verschillende baantjes. geen enkele uitgever zag iets in zijn verhalen, totdat zijn agent bij Dell terecht kwam. Daar wilden ze niets kopen, maar vroegen ze hem of hij een psychologische thriller kon schrijven. Saul maakte een verhaallijn, schreef het uit en hoopte dat het goed genoeg was. Zowel zijn agent als Dell waren laaiend enthusiast en zagen in dit verhaal een bestseller. Dell pakte groots uit. Advertenties en TV spots voor deze onbekende auteur werden gemaakt. En het slaagde. Saul werd in een klap wereldberoemd. Suffer the Children was geboren. Alle boeken die erna kwamen kwamen wel in de Bestsellerlijsten en zijn boeken werden wereldwijd uitgebracht en in verschillende talen vertaalt. De boeken werden uitgegeven door uitgeverijen die zijn verbonden aan Random House. Naast auteur is Saul ook acteur, scriptschrijver en is 1 van zijn boeken in 1984 uitgebracht als film. Meer informatie over John Saul is te vinden op een van de onderstaande sites.http://www.johnsaul.com/index.htmlhttps://www.goodreads.com/author/show...http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0766657/---BoekinformatieUitgeverij PhoenixISBN: 90.6879.004.8240 pagina's; paperback
What do You think about Comes The Blind Fury (1990)?
John Saul is one of my favorite authors and when the opportunity came for me to read „Comes the blind fury” I didn.t wait around. The book was a bit less than I expected, but this doesn.t mean it wasn.t a good book. It had the catch that I was so used to. It was terrifying and brutal. And made me wonder about the human nature. Comes the blind fury is the story of a girl that comes to the conclusion that she is all alone in the world and finds comfort where she shouldn.t. Strange things start happening and the past comes to life to bring terror on Paradise Point.
—Andra
I was asking around for a really good, really scary, nightmare-giving novel when someone told me to try any books by John Saul. So I went to the bookstore and found quite a few of his books. Maybe it's the 'spooky' picture of the girl on the cover, or maybe it's just fate, but I ended up buying this one. It took me only a few days to finish it, and not because it's that gripping. The whole story is quite simple, nothing really extraordinary about it- a dead girl seeking revenge, working through an old doll found by the clueless new girl in town. Didn't give me the chills at all.
—Hannah
Made it to page 342 before giving up. The book became very frustrating and predictable for me. Examples: Predictable in that at 342 I knew what was going to happen to Annie and frustrating because the teacher was dumb enough not to just WATCH and call her man, but to LEAVE Michelle and Annie ALONE.These kinds of illogical and irresponsible actions by adults are chock throughout the book, the worst being Cal, Michelle's father. The entire book is pretty predictable in that, if something bad CAN happen - it will. Mostly because some adult at some point said "Oh things are better now!" and stopped paying attention.The story was interesting, although I was far more interested in the house and the history of the Carsons and what specifically caused what is happening.
—Sheryl Dunn
