If this was an episode severed, so to speak, from the body of A Dark Matter, it’s easy to understand why. This is very, very...
This extremely creepy and disturbing novella is either a pendant to, or, more likely, an outtake from Straub’s most recent full-length novel A Dark Matter, published earlier this year.
This story focuses on that book’s ill-fated secondary character Keith Hayward during his adolescent years in Milwaukee. Keith’s disturbing misbehavior, spurred by his non-affectionate obsession with his neighbor’s pets, stirs his mother Maggie to hope her only child will benefit from the steadying influence of his frequently visiting Uncle Tillman. But, as we know from the opening pages, “Uncle Till” is a charismatic drifter whose unexplained nightly excursions have attracted the attention of local police. Nevertheless, Keith cherishes Till’s counsel that a boy soon to be a man needs “a special place” to store his secrets—and the boy’s “experiments” with animals take over his life. Straub sticks closely to Keith’s roiling thoughts, as he enters high school, where severe acne and an aura of menacing stoicism discourage would-be bullies. No such luck for his forlorn classmate Tomek Miller, whose gratitude for Keith’s “protection” knows no bounds. Soon Keith masters homosexual sadism (graphically, gratuitously described), forcing the weaker “Miller” to aid the researches he conducts in his secret room (the special place Uncle Till had urged Keith to create). Meanwhile, news reports about the reappearance of a serial murderer (“the Ladykiller”) enable Keith to recognize “the meshing of two separate calendars, his uncle’s and the murderer’s.” Keith confides his suspicions to Uncle Till, draws Miller deeper into his web, and, at Christmas, presents his mentor with the ultimate gift. The book is unquestionably an efficient nausea-inducer, but it contains many more shocks than surprises and is propelled by sexual imagery so pronounced that it usurps and dissipates the story’s horror content.
If this was an episode severed, so to speak, from the body of A Dark Matter, it’s easy to understand why. This is very, very close to Straub at his very, very worst.Pub Date: July 21, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-60598-102-4
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Borderland/Ivan Dee
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
IN THE NEWS
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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