If Stephen King is the Louis L'Amour of horror writers, then Peter Straub is the Henry James. King is the master of blue collar gruesome and Straub is expert in urbane psychological terror. When Straub is good, he is VERY good (Ghost Story, Mystery). When he's bad, he usually interesting (The Hellfire Club, The Throat). But with his new novel, A Dark Matter, Straub is not even interesting, he's almost incoherent.
First, the
story: one evening in 1966 (damn, the 60s!) in Madison, Wisconsin, a group of students follow their guru into a meadow and perform some mysterious (and forbidden, of course) ritual. Eight people go into the meadow, six return. One body is left behind munched beyond recognition, and the second body just vanishes into the great netherworld. The leader, Spencer Mallon, is one of the phony Jim Morrison types who spout New Age nonsense to a group of wide-eyed innocent kids; he sleeps with the girls, mooches food, booze and drugs from the group - a typical 60s intellectual hack. After the "incident", he skips town, leaving the surviving kids to deal with the fallout. One goes insane, others become criminals, one becomes a writer (imagine that!) but all have deep emotional trauma that follows them into their middle years.
Through the annoying use of what critics and collegiate types like to call a Roshomon-style narrative (the same story told from different viewpoints) Straub assaults the reader with paragraphs of dense prose which any community college English 101 instructor would have slashed with red ink: "Too wordy! Be concise!"
By page 100 the reader is forced to read a fictional version of the event (by the author character) and within two pages we realize why it has remained unpublished - it's awful. So take heed and avoid this mishmash of supernatural silliness. The last thing you need is to spend time in the overrated hazy past of the 60s with a self-centered guru-on-the-make and a group of easily-fooled kids.
BILBIO SAYS: Stay away!
Alternate read: Ghost Story, by Peter Straub, a classic, and creepy horror novel.
First, the
story: one evening in 1966 (damn, the 60s!) in Madison, Wisconsin, a group of students follow their guru into a meadow and perform some mysterious (and forbidden, of course) ritual. Eight people go into the meadow, six return. One body is left behind munched beyond recognition, and the second body just vanishes into the great netherworld. The leader, Spencer Mallon, is one of the phony Jim Morrison types who spout New Age nonsense to a group of wide-eyed innocent kids; he sleeps with the girls, mooches food, booze and drugs from the group - a typical 60s intellectual hack. After the "incident", he skips town, leaving the surviving kids to deal with the fallout. One goes insane, others become criminals, one becomes a writer (imagine that!) but all have deep emotional trauma that follows them into their middle years.Through the annoying use of what critics and collegiate types like to call a Roshomon-style narrative (the same story told from different viewpoints) Straub assaults the reader with paragraphs of dense prose which any community college English 101 instructor would have slashed with red ink: "Too wordy! Be concise!"
By page 100 the reader is forced to read a fictional version of the event (by the author character) and within two pages we realize why it has remained unpublished - it's awful. So take heed and avoid this mishmash of supernatural silliness. The last thing you need is to spend time in the overrated hazy past of the 60s with a self-centered guru-on-the-make and a group of easily-fooled kids.
BILBIO SAYS: Stay away!
Alternate read: Ghost Story, by Peter Straub, a classic, and creepy horror novel.
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