”...And then shall arise a contemptible one whom royal majesty has not been given. He shall come by counterfeit means and obtain the Kingdom of flatteries. Armies shall be swept away before him and broken...and he shall act deceitfully and he shall become strong with a small people. Without warning he shall come into the richest parts; and he shall do what neither his fathers nor his fathers’ fathers have done, scattering among the people plunder, spoils, and goods. He shall devise plans against strongholds, he shall exalt himself and magnify himself above every God, and shall speak astonishing things against the God of Gods. He shall prosper until the indignation is accomplished, for what is determined shall be done.” The movie poster for the 1976 version starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick.Jeremy Thorn and his wife Katherine have been struggling to conceive. Katherine teeters on the edge of the precipice of insanity. They believe that if only they could have a child it would give Katherine something more to focus on than her own unhappiness. They have miscarried a couple of times and now finally a pregnancy is coming to term. Katherine is hospitalized in the 8th month and the fears of losing yet another child are gnawing at their already shattered nerves.She loses the child…but wait.Father Spilletto pulls Jeremy Thorn aside and said “do I have a deal for you” (and the devil deals the cards). A child is presented to Thorn. A cherub, healthy, and the wife doesn’t ever have to know. Thorn overwhelmed with emotions and realizing what losing another child will do to his wife...accepts. I could almost hear the whisk whisk of the priest rubbing his hands together with satisfaction over another bargain made. The child is in place. His name is Damien.Haven’t we all at times wondering if our child was the spawn of satan? Those moments when their head starts spinning around on their shoulders and for a moment I am amused and even enthralled... well until the fish start falling from the sky and a cloud of locust descends. Grilled grasshopper as a side dish to fried fish is fine for a while, and better yet if the damn wine hasn’t been turned into blood, but it doesn’t take long for me to want them to officially declare themselves Demon or just an annoying little twerp. If they are a DEMON I can turn them over to a priest or make a call to Sam and Dean Winchester, but if they are just an annoying little twerp?*Sigh*...then I have to keep trying to find ways to communicate and coexist with this entity. Sam and Dean are on my speed dial.Damien is an odd little fellow. ”He’s like a little man from Mars,” Horton once remarked to his wife. “Like he was sent here to study the human race.”His first nanny hangs herself as an act of devotion to Damien. A Mrs. Blaylock appears and declares herself the new nanny. Jeremy and Katherine are suspicious, but not suspicious enough. Damien seems to like her and her devotion to his welfare is without question, but when she starts to push Katherine aside the Thorns find themselves locked in a battle with the “hired help” for time with their son. A priest named Tassone arrives at Thorn’s office spouting gibberish and really he is too desperate for the salvation of his own soul to appear as anything other than a lunatic. He was for lack of a better term “the cleaner” for Spilletto. He has much to atone for. He has very little time to convince Thorn that his son is not what he seems or actually that he is exactly what he seems. The forces around Damien are starting to circle Tassone. Jeremy soon finds himself on his way to Rome hoping for answers to explain what and who Damien is. What bargain did he really make with Father Spilletto? Who are those people in the grave North of Rome protected by dogs that could have stepped out of the script of a Resident Evil movie? ”The bushes began to rustle and another dog’s head appeared; this one gray, its muzzle disfigured and dripping. Then another appeared, and another, the cemetery coming alive with motion as the darkened figures emerged from everywhere, a pack of at least ten, insane and ravenous, their mouths dripping in a continual drool.”A Devil Child’s best friends. The dying words of a priest send Thorn to Jerusalem to track down a man named Bugenhagen, the last of a long line of exorcists. He is living underground at the heart of the beginning of Christianity in the City of Jezreel, town of Meggido. It is the only place where he is safe. He explains to Thorn what he must do. The 2006 remake of The Omen stars the lovely Julia Stiles, Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick and Liev SchrieberThis book launched a franchise of books and movies. Even though I had a good idea of the plot it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I will certainly be on the look out for signs of the Diabolical Trinity. ”The Devil, The Anti-Christ, and The False Prophet. If your children or your grandchildren are born with a full head of hair find a reason to shave their head and look for a trinity of numbers that will send a shiver down to your toes...666. I hope you don’t find them. This is another entry in my 1970s nostalgic horror tour.
I re-read The Omen today. The last time I read this book I was sixteen. The concept was always something that interested me. An evil child -- little else can be creepier than that to me. I had always remembered this as sending shivers down my spine. A book that kept me up all night as I read it, hidden away in my room. It's still a classic in horror, in my opinion. And it is a very interesting book that has a lot of elements that come together smoothly. Thorn and Katherine are sympathetic characters in a way, but also a little hard to relate to. Not many of us are vastly rich and successful, like these two. I like the way we were introduced to facts prior to them. So when we, the readers, knew something horrible was happening to them, they didn't. This book, however, did remind me why I'm not a fan of third person omniscient POV. I like first person and I love a good third person close POV that has a vivid voice, but omniscient...? It's hard to relate to and it's generally voiceless. The narrator is just telling us everything that happens while head jumping from paragraph to paragraph -- sometimes sentence to sentence. That's just not my favorite thing. I like to stick with one head in one section. If we head jump from section to section, that's fine. But in one section, I like to be with one person. When we head jump, it's hard to really get to know one character. It's even harder to care about them. We're so removed from them. Whereas with third person close, we're attached to just one, and -- of course -- first person POV, we're in the head of one character. That aside, Seltzer had a talent for building suspense and the way this book end? That was so shocking the first time I read it. When an author can end a book that way, in a satisfying manner, I am always really impressed. Take away point: Big lies come back to bite you in the ass
What do You think about The Omen (2006)?
Leí este libro después de haber visto la película. Hace mucho tiempo, eso sí. Recuerdo que el libro es bastante fiel a la película, y también al posterior remake, lo cual siempre es entrañable —ya que la costumbre suele ser en que lo único que tengan en común sea el título, por desgracia—. Mientras lo iba leyendo iba recordando escenas de la película, pero aun así no me desvelé ningún momento clave en el transcurso de la historia ya que al hacer tanto tiempo del visionado habían muchas cosas que ya no recordaba.Imaginemos por un momento que no he visto la película. Que no sabes qué pasará. Que cuando Robert Thorn decide adoptar un bebé para no arruinar la vida de su mujer con un segundo parto fallido, ocultándoselo, y haciéndole creer que es su hijo legítimo, se te viene una bonita historia con final feliz, de cuento de Disney. Bonito ¿eh? Pues nada de esto es lo que encontrarás en este libro.Es un libro que no me ha dejado indiferente, que no se me ha hecho pesado en absoluto, y que me daba pena terminar porque estaba encantándome. Uno de esos libros que recordarás con cariño para siempre; porque lo merecen, porque no le sobra ni le falta de nada.Un libro que recomendaría a ojos cerrados a cualquier aficionado a las historias de terror. Y a los que no también, por qué no; si no lo son es porque no han leído todavía algo así.
—Javi
دوباره بازگشت به نوجوانی. دلهرهی خواندن این کتاب روی پاگرد طبقه بالا و مرگهای عجیب و شوم شخصیتها، هنوز در خاطرم هست، هنوز.
—Miss Ravi
Jeremy Thorn, the US Ambassador to Britain, and his wife Katherine have been trying repeatedly to have a child. Katherine has been depressed about their difficulties, but has refused the idea to adopt. When Jeremy is told at the hospital that the pregnancy they had their hopes on just ended in a stillbirth, he agrees to adopt a newborn baby whose mother died in childbirth at the same time Katherine gave birth. He and the priest conspire to hide this from anyone else and make it look simply as if Thorn’s child had lived. Robert vows to never tell Katherine. After they bring the baby home, odd things start to happen. Then a priest shows up warning Robert that this child, Damien, is the anti-christ. Katherine is having emotional problems, Damien acts oddly, especially if they try to take him to church. Robert starts to wonder, is Damien evil?I’m not really sure how I felt about The Omen. I never really felt all that invested in it, though. I didn’t really like any of the characters, and there wasn’t much character depth to them anyway. The best way I can describe it, I think, is if you think of one of those life-size cardboard cut-outs. It looks like a person, and from far away you may even think it is a person, but when you get up close, you see it’s just a big piece of cardboard. This book, never even really felt like a book. It was so one-dimensional, that it felt like an imitation of a book. The story didn’t seem to have much life to it, and the characters were dull and lifeless. It had enough of a storyline to keep me reading to see what happened, and the pace was fast, but I just felt kind of bored while I was reading it. A horror story should make you feel scared and alive, not bored. I will say I had a nightmare after I read this, about demonic TV actors coming after me. It could have been because of this book, or maybe I’ve just seen The Andy Griffith Show one too many times, but I feel like the nightmare was the most exciting thing that happened while I was reading this book. So, I was disappointed and wouldn’t recommend this one for a good Halloween read. I guess the movie scared me because I was young and up too late at night alone. 1 star.This review was originally posted on Bookworm Book Reviews
—Kim Griffin
