A year after the death of one of their members, the tight-knit Chowder Society, consisting now of 4 old men, invites the deceased man's nephew over to shed light on the frightening things that have been happening around them. The young man is a writer and they find curious similarities to events in their own lives and to that of some of the elements of his horror novel.
They hope to find an answer to the dreams and the nightmares that impress them with a terrible sense of doom upon awakening, and the hideous feeling of being watched when no-one could be watching, or to the matter of the livestock that is being slaughtered and drained of blood in their peaceful town of Millburn.
Have they been simply scaring eachother or could it be that the horror stories they've been telling amongst themselves since the loss of their friend are more than just stories? Have they stirred something up that was previously forgotten? Because the four old men have ancient secrets. And some secrets have lives of their own and do not permit themselves to be buried and forgotten in the dark.
Meanwhile the arrival of a young and mysterious woman heralds the turning of the weather and an unseasonable cold. And who can tell what will happen to Millburn's residents should the snows build and build and cut them off from the outside world, to leave them at the mercy of the things that hide in the dark.
Review
Might seem odd to say that about what is supposed to be a horror novel, but there it is.
Some books can remind you just why you love reading.
There are practically no dips in quality and never a moment where I'm completely sure how the plot will go or the story will end. Of course I had my guesses and I did end up being largely in the right. But hardly completely.
Keep in mind, this is of course solely my opinion and the general response to this novel seems to be very divisive. Of course, looking through reviews, a large part of that lies in certain people naming this one of the best horror novels of all time *Cough* Stephen King *Cough*. That man has both the admirable and lamentable quality of praising every single thing he likes to the moon. The blame can not be laid solely at King's feet though. As far as I can tell, there's a widespread negative response, mostly because of and in response to excessive hype, going on with this novel.
But even I kinda think it's one of the best horror novels I've ever read, but at the same time I can concede that it isn't that extraordinarily special... You can easily see the problem.
With 'one of the best horror novels I've ever read' I mean that it's an incredibly competently plotted and well-structured novel with both its feet planted firmly in horror tropes, though I should add, as has been my experience with horror novels in general; it's not necessarily scary. Fear is a hard to thing to get right in reading fiction, and I personally have been only scared a handful of times while reading.
Build-up is key in horror.
The moment we see the ghost, the monster, the horror; the fear drops away and release comes in its place. The thing has shown itself. And it's not as bad as imagined. Nothing can ever be as bad as rampant imagination builds it up to be.
It's always a let-down, however so slight. The hope and dread and fear can never sustain itself when the climax comes. In response to this, Ghost Story lets the tension build for as long as possible and then even when the resolution draws near, it won't let up. It's never terrifying. but it always holds its cards close to the chest. Right up until the very end, of course.
I found the climax less interesting than the time the story takes to get there. Though it still wasn't bad.
It resembles, for instance, Stephen king's Salem's Lot more than a little, you know, if that actually would've had something of a resolution. But where I found that one's set-up both labouriously boring and way too fast-paced at the same time, for me to get invested, here everything glided along naturally into a compelling narrative. This was helped by me being receptive to what the book was trying to do and giving it the time it needed. This might not be for people who chug down books as fast as they can, then. (translation; it might be a little slow.)
One of the things about horror literature is that it needs accomodating. It's not going to work on you if you don't let it. reading it in the sun on an easy chair by the pool isn't going to let you. Reading it at night, in the silence while the house is darkened, with every room harboring shadows and your imagination running wild at every creak in the dark, is what will.
It's a good rule of thumb for many types of fiction.
Writing Style and Literary Influences
There were a few notable times where Straub experiments with his techniques when he travels between different characters. It's a technique that makes the reader anticipate the next chapter. It's like when you anticipate reading a new writer, and a new accompanying writer's voice. But here the voice depends wholly on the character of the moment. This is of course not a new thing in fiction, but it's been a while that I saw it done this well.
The narrative consists for the largest part of heavily interconnected stories told by the varying protagonists of the novel who are reasonably well characterized.
And like the title of the novel itself, I might be giving the wrong impression here (The story isn't exactly about ghosts, though it does have its fair share of them, so be wary of disappointment there). This is one narrative, but throughout the whole novel, it's built up out of various lifestories of an intimate circle of people. That way every story has bearing on the rest, and this becomes more and more clear the longer the story goes on. When everything is revealed the various lifestories will be more closely linked than at first was apparent.
Straub effortlessly keeps the reader guessing about things that should be obvious, elliciting reasons and explanations in the reader that would fit with the narrative he is weaving but leaves one unable to pin down any one suitable explanation, because every time a veritable horde of them manage to present themselves.
At the same time all the explanations hinge on being fantastical supernatural horrors and the reason why I was, in part, kept to guessing was because the caliber of the writing was very much literary and not at all in keeping with past experiences of reading horror.
The writing is very much of a literary bend.
A large part of this can be found in the character of Donald Wanderley, who's literary erudition is at times on full display; p194
"I found a statement by Hawthorne which helped to explain this method: 'I have sometimes produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in which the spiritual mechanism of the faery legend should be combined with the characters and manners of everyday life.'
It's a very mainstream way of thinking about this. A means of imbuing relevancy and diminishing the fantastical elements by undercutting them, because see! The Real Life stuff matters more, so don't be afraid of liking the silly fantasy nonsense that comes with it.
A very elitist point of view. *Tut tut*
Anyway.
There's a playful meta-introspection going on on p42;
'A nice exercise in genre writing. More literary than most. A few nice phrases, a reasonably well-constructed plot.'
I really enjoy when the writer can talk about himself like this.
And that reasonably well constructed? Haha, no. That was very well done, sir.
Apparently Straub read alot of classics in the genre in the preparation to penning his own story down. and it really shows.
From name-dropping books like Carrie and having similarities like having a small-town bully as one of the characters' compatriot and foil, plus the obvious echoes to Salem's Lot.Some of the characters' names are homages in themselves; Sears James is a reference to Henry James and his Turning of the Screw which I sadly haven't read yet, while Ricky Hawthorne's, is a homage to Nathaniel Hawthorne, who I know nothing about and for once feel no pressure to read up on. I've got enough on my plate thank you very much. I don't need to be wooed into reading more authors I'll never actually get around to reading.
Terror 8 Notes
But apart from that; not too scary but yeah, definitely Horror with a capital H and more than worth it to be planted amongst the 8.
Also, looking through the World Fantasy Award winners list, I'm finding alot of novels that would clearly be labeled as horror.
Ah well... So many good books, so little time.
Happy to have taken some time out to read this one.
More Terror 8 notes and SPOILERS for Fevre Dream, Ghost Story and Something Wicked This Way Comes
I've now read 3 of the Terror 8 Books and they've all bizarrely had the same conceit at the heart of their seperate narratives.
Monsters that lie at the heart of every myth of vampires and/or ghosts or monsters of any kind, with every supernatural horror tale through the ages pointing to them.
In both Something Wicked this ways comes and Ghost Story. Also to a lesser degree; the background story of the very real traditional vampires in Fevre Dream gave some curious echoes to the story giving background to the creatures in Ghost Story.
All the tales point to these creatures existing side by side with humanity and preying on them.
Because of this, it fits very neatly and more accomplishedly into the slot of the fantasy masterworks than I expected, but its trappings very much belong to the horror category. Ergo, it does fit more as a Horror Masterwork! Such a shame that gollancz never comitted to that project. This would definitely belong to the list.
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