Mark Underhill is a typical 15-year-old boy living with his mom and dad in a typical Midwest middle-class neighborhood. His dad is an emotionally distant public school vice principal and his enduring mom works the complaints desk at the gas company. Mark likes music, skateboarding, and hanging out with his best friend, Jimbo. But Mark’s regular life takes a turn when he discovers his mother has committed a gruesome suicide in their own bathtub. From this scene on, Straub’s story attempts to terrify readers with supernatural mystique, combining a present-day string of teenage boy abductions with a decades-old backstory of a creepy modified home where lived a serial killing monster. Rape, torture, murder and ghosts all figure in, and Mark’s uncle, Tim, arrives on the scene to assist with narrating the story. Conveniently, Tim is a publishing horror author, so he’s apparently treading familiar ground...tI’ll admit now that this story really disappointed me. It started well -- the writing style had a certain sophistication I don’t often find in the mass market horror genre, and Straub wastes little time in preparing the setting and jumping to some action. But the plot construction was weak, some answers he gives up too easily and some he completely ignores, and the climax was overlong and unsatisfying. I’m not happy with his conclusion of Mark’s character -- without spoiling I can say that Mark has “disappeared”, but remains able to communicate (albeit elusively) with Tim via email, though he has no domain name to his e-address. This just bothered me all kinds of ways -- mostly because, upon entering this book I agreed to let Straub haunt me with ghosts and gross me out with maniac serial killers, but I did not agree to impossible technologies and emails from the afterlife. It felt like a breach of contract. I also have to point to the glaring lack of female characters -- the most robust one of three is a nympho-ghost, and the other dies on page one-- and the preponderance of misogynist males, not just the serial killers, that people this story. I’m guessing the reason we don’t really ever learn what happened to Mark is because he was the only likable character, and Straub knew he couldn’t get away with any bloody finality for that guy. tOne-third through this book I thought I might get a genuine spook, but it didn’t pan out this time. Someday I’ll find a horror title that not only creeps me out throughout the read, but long after the last page, a story that doesn’t crumble in it’s resolution. One of the best I’ve found so far is John Dies at the End by David Wong. It’s certainly the scariest book I’ve read, and at the same time, amazingly, laugh-out-loud hilarious at the very same time. How does he do it? tI have a number of horror novels in my own collection -- of all the genres it is a perennial favorite I return to every fall for easy, creepy leisure reading. But I chose this one from the Coralville Library since I’d seen it mentioned several times in readers’ advisory materials, and I’ve been curious about Straub’s style, noting that he’s collaborated several times with Stephen King. I’m kind of King-ed out at this point in my life, and after this read I don’t expect to rush out for any King/Straub co-works. Perhaps a true crime reader with a soft-spot for the supernatural might enjoy this book, but don’t push it on your horror fans without fair warning.
The story seemed intriguing but I kept feeling like the author didn't give any credit to his readers. The reader is constantly being told things explicitly rather than letting anything be left to the imagination ["Jimbo hesitated, and now I know exactly why. He had to think about going further" (p. 224)].Another annoyance is that the narrator switches even within a paragraph so the author can tell you exactly what every single person is thinking and feeling. "In Jimbo's frank stare, Tim could see that he was deciding to part with a share of his secret" (p.127) is an example of the author's indecisiveness regarding whose point of view we're getting. It's followed a few lines later by "A tremor like an electrical current moved through the boy's entire body," which seems like awfully intimate knowledge for the seeming perspective-holder, Tim, to have of the boy, Jimbo.Aside from the constantly-changing, everyone-is-omniscient-sometimes narration, the actual descriptions of events were often heavy-handed. "He really was a natural comedian, and under other circumstances, this little performance would have made Tim laugh out loud. However, what he said in response took Tim completely by surprise" (p. 127). I get that the author is trying to add some depth to his characters, but it doesn't actually matter at all that he was a natural comedian, because it has nothing to do with the story. To me, this mention is the equivalent of the author saying, "The kid usually pooped in the morning, but today he pooped at 3 p.m. instead." It changes the tone of the paragraph, which the author then immediately (clumsily) attempts to reestablish by saying "what he said in response took Tim completely by surprise."I understand the author is attempting to be evocative when he says things like, "After losing the yolky look of the afternoon, the sunlight had muted itself to a dispersed, fleeting shade of yellow that struck Mark Underhill with the force of a strong fragrance or a rich chord from a guitar" (p. 75), but it's obviously over the top, and to me, a distraction in the context of the rest of the language used. And following "struck" with "rich chord from a guitar" is... gross to me, but admittedly probably perfectly fine to other readers.Anyway. I don't want to tear this book apart line-by-line. Parts of the book were intriguing, and part of the resolution of the mystery was satisfying, but overall the writing was so unrefined that I couldn't handle it.
What do You think about Lost Boy Lost Girl (2004)?
This is a short story that could have worked at 20-something page count, but instead was stretched to 300. The best thing about it was meeting the familiar characters from Koko, but that's pretty much it. Lost Boy, Lost Girl is divided into three parts - presentation of the mystery and introduction of the characters and setting - the investigation - the conclusion. Narrated in the third person, the narration constantly switches between the characters and sometimes parts are relayed through one character's journal.That's the worst thing about the novel. The plot is relayed in such a jumbled way that it never allows for any dread or suspense to develop. Tension is practically nonexistant, and from the first page to last the book is ultimately unsatysfying.The second worst thing about the novel is that not much happens. That in itself would be all right if the characters or the setting were compelling, but they are not. The same small town, the same small town people, the same cops, everything screams "we've been here before". Two teen protagonists are shown as inteligent, but when one of them sends an e-mail he speaks only in abbreviations...which he never does in real life. That's a small gripe, but a gripe nonetheless.On the whole, I wouldn't really recommend this to anyone. Peter Straub is a great writer - Shadowland! - but this is far from his finest hour.
—Maciek
This is a horror/crime story about a teenaged boy, Mark Underhill, who becomes obsessed with a creepy abandoned house in his neighborhood. Around the same time, his mother kills herself and a serial killer begins preying on neighborhood boys. None of this is a spoiler -- it's the premise established in the first few chapters -- and all of it is inter-related.The story progresses in a disjointed, "literary" fashion with multiple points of view, scenes repeated with a slightly different emphasis, and much of it told by a character tangential to the story, the boy's uncle, who is (of course) a horror writer. In some books, this approach, like slowly peeling of layers of the onion until the awful truth is finally revealed, is very effective. In this book, it didn't ever seem to gel.On a positive note, I never lost interest in the story and had no problems sticking with it to the end, and Straub is a good writer. I would say that his strength is creating very vivid scenes and images, and the dialogue was good as well. But in this case, I felt that the whole was less than the sum of its parts. The multiple points of view and the repetition really started to get on my nerves. For the uncle's portions, there would be parts told from the third person, and then switch the his journal entries, in the first person, with little hints about "hmm, maybe this isn't true." There were several instances where the author would tell a scene, then flashback and work up to the scene, presenting the same events more than once. As I said, sometimes this approach works, but for me, in this case, it didn't.It's hard to have a truly satisfying ending for this type of story. If the author explains too much, it can destroy the sense of mystery, and if they don't explain enough, it's deeply unsatisfying. In this case, he "explained" just enough, leaving a few tantalizing loose threads, but I thought the ending was stupid. (view spoiler)[ The ghost of a tortured five year old girl showed herself to Mark as a supernaturally beautiful adult, and had such awesome sex with him on the the very torture bed where she had suffered that he is convinced to somehow join her in the ghostly realm without actually dying first. He's not dead, just gone forever, but don't worry...they're so happy together. (hide spoiler)]
—Emily Crow
I am currently taking a course that requires students to read one book from each literary genre. Recently, we began the Horror genre. I selected this book to read. I do not read horror novels often, but I have read a few and enjoyed them.This book was neither scary nor suspenseful to me, so I was never able to become interested. I was also irritated by the poor and stereotypical portrayal of teen lingo. The odd insertions of the word "yo" in dialogue was annoying. Also, the emails shown in the book felt completely unrealistic. Srsly, who abbreviates every wurd in an email & also spellz everything else rite? In a txt mayb, but not in an email. Just little stuff like that made it hard to like this book. Not to mention that there seemed to be an absence of horrific or highly suspenseful events.
—Suzi
