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3.19 AVERAGE
3.19 AVERAGE
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A quick read that had me puzzled, kind of disgusted, puzzled again, sad, full of pity, scared, and ultimately unfulfilled in the way that movies that let you infer the ending make you. I still liked it. I think it was very real.
challenging
mysterious
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I wish that I had read this before The Devil House, because it feels like he was trying to write a similar story. The Devil House is just better at it. All that said, Darnielle's storytelling is as good here as it is in the other books of his that I've read. His prose is that of an excellent songwriter, and his characters are so well fleshed out that we can feel like we know them, even if we've never met anyone like them. His understanding of the midwest feels, for someone who has spent some time there (2002-2004 in Iowa), very native.
I did feel like his expectations of the reader were a little less realistic than some of his other novels. We follow the plotline with the video tapes through any number of turns, but he wants us to understand a lot that he isn't writing. That works better in Wolf in White Van and even better than that in The Devil House, but it falters here. Rather than giving us the feeling of "Oh... Oooooooooh!" that comes with grasping an implication, this makes us cock our heads to the side and wonder if we should invest the time in rereading what we've read.
I did feel like his expectations of the reader were a little less realistic than some of his other novels. We follow the plotline with the video tapes through any number of turns, but he wants us to understand a lot that he isn't writing. That works better in Wolf in White Van and even better than that in The Devil House, but it falters here. Rather than giving us the feeling of "Oh... Oooooooooh!" that comes with grasping an implication, this makes us cock our heads to the side and wonder if we should invest the time in rereading what we've read.
I really enjoyed Wolf in White Van, so I'm surprised that this story fizzled out so spectacularly. there's no real climax, there's no insight. really bummed about this one.
What a perfect example of Midwestern gothic literature, wow. It left me feeling the way I do after waking up from a disturbing-not-quite-nightmare-dream, the story is choppy and spliced together, but Darnielle manages it in a way that keeps you wanting to push on. It feels simultaneously hyperreal and delirious. Darnielle's writing style is wonderful as well, he captures that unique strangeness of rural midwestern towns beautifully, and the characters all feel genuine and alive even through their strange actions.
I strongly thought about giving this novel 2 stars, but prose and imagery is beautiful. Darnielle is a fine wordsmith but his story falls flat.
I have never read a book that captured so much of what I find to be strange and terrifying about the Midwest before.
I thought the characters could have been much more developed. He certainly got the mood of Small Town Iowa, though. And the idea was interesting. Inadvertently, it's one of the last memories of life with video stores.
challenging
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A
Tonight, I hid in an under-the-stairs closet during a tornado warning for a half-hour; then I emerged and finished this book.
I recommend the pairing.
As I read this tale that approaches the awful and settles instead into a rich menancholy, I kept wondering, 'What kind of memory serves, what kind of world is it that comes headlong at you then swerves at the last possible second? It's this one. It's this one.'
Darnielle has the ability to still a moment and let a feeling settle into its seat. His tale here seems as though it's headed for something impossibly awful, something sudden that will pick you up and whirl you, something perhaps other-worldly and definitely monstrous.
And then it falls into something much worse: the kind of loss we're all headed for when those we love most vanish from our lives.
Whether those disappearances be sudden and tragic or unexpected and inexplicable or perfectly, plainly predictable, the empty space behind the loss is largely the same--an unfillable quiet, a razing and a levelling.
It doesn't--this novel reminds us--take a tornado to devastate us.
I recommend the pairing.
As I read this tale that approaches the awful and settles instead into a rich menancholy, I kept wondering, 'What kind of memory serves, what kind of world is it that comes headlong at you then swerves at the last possible second? It's this one. It's this one.'
Darnielle has the ability to still a moment and let a feeling settle into its seat. His tale here seems as though it's headed for something impossibly awful, something sudden that will pick you up and whirl you, something perhaps other-worldly and definitely monstrous.
And then it falls into something much worse: the kind of loss we're all headed for when those we love most vanish from our lives.
Whether those disappearances be sudden and tragic or unexpected and inexplicable or perfectly, plainly predictable, the empty space behind the loss is largely the same--an unfillable quiet, a razing and a levelling.
It doesn't--this novel reminds us--take a tornado to devastate us.