Quite simply the worst novel I've ever read.I quit reading it in the last quarter of the book and just looked up the ending online. I'm glad I didn't finish it. I love horror novels and even intense horror novels. This was not a horror novel. The supernatural elements were nearly no existent and there wasn't even a serial killer or stalker. It was about a town of horrible people with no morals who rape, murder, and desecrate everything around them. Simply disgusting for no reason. Scenes of illicit sex were also thrown in without any purpose or driving force to the plot. I was looking for a creepy backwoods slasher and instead got this steaming pile of flat misogynistic crap.At this point, if you've followed my reviews at all, you probably know that one of my favorite sub-genres of horror is the Old Dark House. Many consider this also as the Chiller genre. Something I haven't touched on as much yet is my close second favorite sub-genre of horror. That's right, the backwoods. There is something so thrilling about the isolation and natural darkness of the wilderness. It gives a new perspective on feeling trapped. When you are in the middle of nowhere and the horror could be in the shadows behind any tree, that's when things begin to get scary. So naturally when I found this leisure horror novel entitled The Backwoods I instantly picked it up and wanted to read it. I got this little book home and popped it open . . . and was ultimately and utterly disappointing from beginning to end. The story revolves around this little backwoods crabbing town and its strange inhabitants. The main protagonist of the story is Patricia. When her brother-in-law is killed by unusual beheading she goes to the town to attend the funeral and comfort her sister in her loss. After she arrives in the small town of her childhood, a place she loathes and fears, the place where she was raped as a teenager, the carnage begins to heighten. From that point the plot of the story becomes disjointed, poorly constructed, and completely flat. There are a bunch of different murders throughout the book that all seem pointless. We don't know who these people are or simply could care less about them. On top of that the violence is peppered with a heavy layer of sex and rape scenes. Usually if a book or movie has a rape scene (particularly if it's graphic in any way) I'm instantly done. I close the book or turn off the T.V. and walk away. Rape is never done tactfully and is almost always degrading in the media. Until authors and writers can learn to address a sensitive topic such as rape in a realistic and constructive manner they need to simply not even try. when they do it usually ends up being a misogynistic mess instead. This book is no exception. In fact, this is the most misogynistic and depraved book I have ever read. Thank you Edward Lee.However, I continued reading this book simply because I was somewhat interested in Patricia. She had a little bit of a flare to her and seemed to be the only decent person in the entirety of the story. I was impressed initially because she seemed to be a somewhat strong female lead. This almost never happened in the media let alone in the horror genre. However, when her story becomes more about her sexual awakening than her relationship with her sister I was done. She goes from being a mildly interesting and strong willed character to a sex object for the reader in a matter of a few chapters. It was a disappointing turn of events . I was waiting for some supernatural explanation for why this character was undergoing such a deep sexual change. Unfortunately, there never was such an explanation therefore marking every sex scene in this novel stuffing to fill the empty gaps between what little pointless story actually existed.Obviously I dislike this novel. There was pointless sex that didn't drive the plot, violent murders that seemed to mean nothing, and flat characters and story that had no nature of good in them whatsoever. However, I think the thing that bothered me most of all about this book is that it was ultimately NOT a horror novel. The Backwoods had no element of the horror structure to it. Yes there were brutal murders and a somewhat supernatural townspeople, but overall this was nothing more than an exploitation story with the purpose of making its reader feel utterly gross. Every character in this book was horrible and had no moral reasoning. Everyone was willing to rape and kill one another, not necessarily for gain, but just for the hell of it. So when they all end up getting slaughtered in one way or the other I didn't even care as a reader. This is not how a horror story should work. There was no feeling of dread, we didn't feel lost being alone in the woods, and there was no "monster" character that frightened and stalked us. No backwoods serial killer, no demon from the deep, just a bunch of rotten people being . . . rotten. I may have been disgusted but I was never intrigued, chilled, or frightened. This piece of misogynistic garbage is a product of our modern horror movements, similar to things like Saw, Hostile, and I Spit on Your Grave. These stories claim to be horror but are nothing more than torture porn. Summing it UpI hated this book. It has been the worst experience in reading I have ever had. The story was boring and flat with characters I could care less about. It was riddled with graphic rape, sex, and violence that had no purpose or driving force to the plot. I'm not a prude by any means and enjoy a decent splatter novel, but this was simply too much. I may give Edward Lee another try (You can't judge an author by one book alone.) at some point but it won't be for a long time. He's obviously a competent writer and I hope in the future he can prove it.FOR THIS AND OTHER REVIEWS VISIT WWW.ASLICEOFHORROR.COM
Short Summary: A forty something red headed, large breasted, and eternally horny female lawyer returns to her hometown to attend the funeral of her sister’s sleaze ball husband. The recently murdered died under very strange circumstances and we figure out within the first four pages that he’s been killing random gypsy type people who are very short, ugly in the face, and supermodel in the body… these people are simply called “Squatters.” More people turn up dead, drugs start showing up, and our lead character plays with herself through all of it. Let me just say that I had hoped Lee had matured a bit, other reviews implied he had and claimed that there was less sex in this book and more story. I’m not sure that we’ve all read the same book, because our leading character spends the majority of the book fantasizing and playing with herself… then there are the multiple rapes, including the rapes of children (thank goodness he didn’t go into detail on that one). And if I had read the word “nipple” one more time I was going to smash my head into my nightstand. The biggest problem with this book was its complete and total lack of focus. Lee had a good premise here, however parts that needed exploration and definition were left out or glossed over and we spent at least 30% of the book in character’s sexual dreams and fantasies which he NEVER got around to explaining or turning into any sort of valid plot point. Areas that could have used more fleshing out? Well the Squatters for one… there is no history, no real hint at their power or background, all we know is that they eat strange food, don’t drink alcohol, draw sigils on things, and wear chicken heads around their necks… oh and all of their women have size D boobs from the age of 10. A little more history on our lead character’s family since that keeps coming up but is never explained. When reading this it felt like Lee had many different ideas and had thought of several ways of taking the story… but he never really capitalized on any of them and instead we are left with a very plain mediocre book that only vaguely touches on the supernatural, and leaves the reader very unsatisfied. The ending followed by the epilogue being the worst parts of all, they come out of nowhere, feel forced, hollow and emotionless. I could imagine a 14 year old looking at me after I finished and saying “wasn’t that SHOCKING?” and I would say, “Yeah, like the ending of High Tension was shocking, because it DIDN’T BELONG!!” there is a difference between a twist ending and dragging crap in from left field and claiming you are a genius because no one saw it coming. Of course they didn’t see it coming; it shouldn’t have happened because it’s got nothing to do with anything else that you’ve written up until that point. I can’t go into detail about the specifics of what irritated the crap out of me because if you are like me you are going to read this either way and I don’t want to ruin it for you. But when you get down to the last 15 pages and nothing has been resolved, you too will realize that you are in for a shoddy ending. Was this book a complete and total waste of time and money? Not for me&, I got it for free and read it on my lunch break; but I certainly wouldn't recommend it to anyone, its just so very mediocre, if you like Lee, pick up one of his other works and leave this one lay.
What do You think about The Backwoods (2005)?
Edward Lee, well known for his demented horror and rich sexual imagery, delivers a rather strange book focusing on a small town dominated by crab picking ‘squatters’. The squatters are about as unusual as you can get when they speak you barely see their mouths move, they’re amazingly short, the women possess eerily appetizing bodies, and they’re all living together on a type of plantation in oddly structured abodes. And of course people such as this practice a different kind of religion that causes all us normal folk to raise an eyebrow or so.The main character in all this, though, isn’t a squatter. She’s a lawyer, which can be just as bad. Beautiful, intelligent, and protective of her sister, Patricia is back home, pushing away painful memories, and suddenly being overcome by strange sexual urges. Her character is real enough to be believable, and her overall demeanor was likeable. Backwoods is told through multiple points of view, with her dominating the show. Characters in general were interesting enough and didn’t harm the story.The plot is bleak, strange, a bit depressing, certainly dark - demented Lee style. He never promises happy endings. It’s not possible to guess who will bite the big one and who will live or even, really, who the real friends are. While starting as an intriguing mystery, too much was let out in the beginning. As a result the mystery alone wasn’t the reason to hang on. But have no fear, for horror fans rarely want to read horror to have a mystery, instead they want terror and they certainly get it here. Several scenes are disturbing, gruesome, with not much held back.Overall this was an entertaining read about an unusual culture, with a captivating main character, sexual tension, and chilling scenarios. On the bad side the very ending let me down a bit, as it seemed cut off and overly grim. Also, I never fully got the sexual urges Patricia experienced; more information in this area is welcome.If you’re a fan of Lee or bizarre horror, be sure to check this one out.
—Erin (Paperback stash) *is juggle-reading*
i've only read one other one of edward lee's books (along with a couple of short stories) in the past, but i've also read about him and his works, so i kind of new what to expect--ultra-violence and ultra-sex. basically, ultra-exploitation. to put it cinematically, edward lee is kind of like grindhouse (the genre, not the double-feature) crossed with clive barker.this book, about a small town in southern virginia that runs into trouble with big-city land developers, fills all of those qualifications. the characters are gigantic stereotypes, from the money-grubbing condo contractor to the goodie-two-shoes good-ol'-boy to the hoity-toity, middle-aged, sex-crazy d.c. real estate lawyer that serves as the protagonist (the word "protagonist" should be used lightly, though, because she doesn't really spend a whole lot of time doing anything to further the plot, she just serves as the voice that says to the reader, "oh, this is what is happening"). they're all over-the-top charicatures, but isn't that the point with this kind of book? either way, it doesn't always work, and most of the time irritates more than anything else.the sex, with which the book is packed, is also over-the-top and really only makes the reader feel uncomfortably dirty. a lot of it is simply tacked on and doesn't really have any sort of purpose, even when it seems to be trying to (like trying to psychologically validate certain behaviors and actions, as well as serving as a red herring at times).on the other hand, (the "good side," you might say) the book is very fast-paced (always a plus with this kind of novel), and by-and-large you're delighted to find the bad guys getting what they deserve in the plainest, most black-and-white ways imaginable. the supernatural undercurrents, by which each of those bad guys are dispatched, are also interesting, and really could have been brought more to the forefront, making the book a whole lot better. literarally (it's not a word, but i'm making it one), this isn't really a good book and especially not compared to other things by edward lee i've read, but, as a book that took all of a few hours to finish while on vacation, it could have been worse.
—James
Edward Lee, The Backwoods (Leisure, 2005)Lee turns in another fast-paced mystery/thriller with horror elements, though this one is far less a straight-up horror novel than most of the Lee books I've read over the years. If you're familiar with Ed Lee, you know what you're getting into (and, actually, it's kind of toned down here, from the stuff of his I'm used to seeing)-- adrenaline-packed action sequences that usually end up with people being very dead and very bloody, supercharged sex, and places where no one, really, has any right to exist outside the covers of magazines.Sometimes I get the feeling it's all a ruse, though. Every once in a while Lee pops up with a word or phrase that makes me think he's a whole lot more educated than his aw-shucks diction would have you believe. But still, it fits right in with this tale of nasty doings in a minuscule town in rural southern Virginia, a novel in which our heroine must return to the town where she grew up for her brother-in-law's funeral. The fact that no one at all liked the brother-in-law save her sister doesn't seem to matter much. She leaves comfortable home and loving husband in Washington DC and travels to a town which, when she even thinks about growing up there, gives her the willies. Great idea, huh? All well and good until the bodies start piling up in a town where no one's been murdered for decades, perhaps even centuries. Yes, something weird is going on in Agan's Point, and before she knows it, our heroine is right in the middle of all the weirdness. Oh, and as if the present isn't enough, she's also wrapped up in the past trauma that caused her to flee the village in the first place.While The Backwoods lacks the squick factor of Slither or the all-out gorefest attitude of City Infernal, and in fact looks almost like a tentative stab at reaching out into the world of the crime thriller, Lee fans will find more than enough blood to satisfy their baser appetites, while thriller fans will be held by the mystery-inside-mystery-inside-mystery layering of the surprisingly complex (though, after a time, predictable, until Lee blindsides you with the mystery he's been making sure you don't think about too closely all the way through) plot. It's not a bad book at all, though I've always held that Lee is stronger in short fiction (“Doing Colfax” is one of those stories that I will simply never forget) and this doesn't put much ammo on the other side of the scale. A good, solid, quick read. ***
—Robert Beveridge
