This was my first foray into the fiction of Mr. Robert Jackson Bennett, and I have to say it was a very good venture. This novel has tinges of Steinbeck as others have mentioned, but I saw more shading of Cormac McCarthy than any other writer. Very reminiscent of The Road, Bennett shoves us headlong into the search for Mr. Shivers, a scarred murderer wandering the rails of a depression-era America. Bennett's voice is hypnotic and prophetic, his command of the language and ability to paint a scene are powerful. The moments of violence mixed with beauty are among the best I've read. The spectacles within the pages are many and if you enjoy a race against evil across a stark and unforgiving countryside, then look no further. Highly recommended. It was a hard book to like (for me) because of the palpable sense of despair that runs all the way through it. But the writing is good, which kept me going, and the character of Connelly is convincing, as is the bleakness and hopeless of those times in America's Dustbowl. Like a number of other readers, I had a bit of a problem with the way it changed from being a chase-the-killer-of-my-daughter novel to something mythological halfway through. It sort of worked, because Connelly was also struggling with this change, and with the sense that he had stepped out of the normal world into something unbelievably strange. And it tied in well with the bleakness, and with the enormity of what we - reading this from the novel's future - know is coming in the twentieth century. But still there was a sense of a hinge halfway through, as if the book was in two separate parts and they didn't quite fit together.
What do You think about Mr. Shiver (2000)?
Started out pretty slow, but half way through the story really picked up and I ended up enjoying it.
—Kelaiah
mmmmhhhhnjnaaaa... don´t really know if I liked it or not
—neuman4
A good story about train hopping horror in the depression.
—breebree
i'll be shivering for a good long while now....
—wanda
