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bookguyeric 's review for:
The Auctioneer
by Joan Samson
A fast talking auctioneer takes up residence in a rural New Hampshire town and sets up a weekly auction to benefit the sheriff’s department. The sheriff, on behalf of the auctioneer, visits all the residents, collecting up things they may regard as junk, but that city folks might use as part of their rustic decor.
Trouble is, the sheriff and his growing number of armed deputies, and the auctioneer himself, keep showing up every week demanding more. It seems the auctioneer is now running the town and bleeding it dry.
The author does a good job at capturing plain rural speech, and building a sense of dread. The final auction we see before the climax is chilling indeed.
The auctioneer, Perly Dunsmore, is one of those sinister literary characters that seem to appear out of nowhere and serve dark forces, like Stephen King’s Randall Flagg and Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden.
My only beef is that, for a relatively short novel, the buildup to the climax seems predictable and long in coming.
Still, I can see why this novel is coming to be regarded as a modern classic. It has sort of a timeless feel, like a story by Bradbury or Shirley Jackson, and concerns the fears of rural folk who feel beset and victimized by more “sophisticated” city folks. Almost 50 years after it’s original publication, a tale about such fears seems to resonate even more in the age of Trump
Trouble is, the sheriff and his growing number of armed deputies, and the auctioneer himself, keep showing up every week demanding more. It seems the auctioneer is now running the town and bleeding it dry.
The author does a good job at capturing plain rural speech, and building a sense of dread. The final auction we see before the climax is chilling indeed.
The auctioneer, Perly Dunsmore, is one of those sinister literary characters that seem to appear out of nowhere and serve dark forces, like Stephen King’s Randall Flagg and Cormac McCarthy’s Judge Holden.
My only beef is that, for a relatively short novel, the buildup to the climax seems predictable and long in coming.
Still, I can see why this novel is coming to be regarded as a modern classic. It has sort of a timeless feel, like a story by Bradbury or Shirley Jackson, and concerns the fears of rural folk who feel beset and victimized by more “sophisticated” city folks. Almost 50 years after it’s original publication, a tale about such fears seems to resonate even more in the age of Trump