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A review by ojtheviking
The Seven Visitations of Sydney Burgess by Andy Marino
4.75
Wow. You read certain books and call them a unique experience. This novel was a whole journey, in the most surreal way. Which I say lovingly, because I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. If a touch of the surreal is your cup of tea, then this should definitely be a gem for you.
The atmosphere within these pages is not only heavy and full of dread, but also nightmarish, like a David Lynch movie. And this bleak, darkly poetic tone is present right from the start, consistent across all the pages, never fully letting you go until the aforementioned journey's over.
I also think there are potentially two ways to read this novel. You can take it all literally, and witness how Sydney's life is gradually taken over by a mysterious force. Or, it can all be a bit metaphorical, with said force symbolizing a whole different, internal struggle. Honestly, both ways kind of work, although I'm personally leaning more toward a combination of the two, so I guess there are three ways to read this.
There's a lot of jumping back and forth in time here, sometimes in a jarring way until it's later explained how we suddenly find ourselves in a certain scenario. Two parallel storylines can unfold in each their own chapter, until one ends up being the explanation of another, almost as if we are witnessing cause and effect at the same time. This feels like a creative way of portraying a fragmented mind, as if bits and pieces of Sydney's memory are scattered around – much like the pieces of broken glass on the cover – waiting to be put together again in the correct order.
To sum it up, this is a paranoid, visceral, deliciously uncomfortable and occasionally severely violent fever dream, with sprinkles of addiction, grief, and corruption on top, captivating from the very first page, refusing to let go until the very last. And so much of this aforementioned sense of dread lies within Marino's wonderful ability to make the character hyper-aware of all the details around her, and the morbid way in which he describes everything through her eyes.
What really impresses me, is that the author's bio claims this is Andy Marino's first horror novel. Well, damn, I was about to say that I certainly hope it's not his last, because this is one hell of a horror debut; fortunately, as far as I can see, among all the other books he's written, at least one more of them is horror. So I'm definitely reading that one at some point!
The atmosphere within these pages is not only heavy and full of dread, but also nightmarish, like a David Lynch movie. And this bleak, darkly poetic tone is present right from the start, consistent across all the pages, never fully letting you go until the aforementioned journey's over.
I also think there are potentially two ways to read this novel. You can take it all literally, and witness how Sydney's life is gradually taken over by a mysterious force. Or, it can all be a bit metaphorical, with said force symbolizing a whole different, internal struggle. Honestly, both ways kind of work, although I'm personally leaning more toward a combination of the two, so I guess there are three ways to read this.
There's a lot of jumping back and forth in time here, sometimes in a jarring way until it's later explained how we suddenly find ourselves in a certain scenario. Two parallel storylines can unfold in each their own chapter, until one ends up being the explanation of another, almost as if we are witnessing cause and effect at the same time. This feels like a creative way of portraying a fragmented mind, as if bits and pieces of Sydney's memory are scattered around – much like the pieces of broken glass on the cover – waiting to be put together again in the correct order.
To sum it up, this is a paranoid, visceral, deliciously uncomfortable and occasionally severely violent fever dream, with sprinkles of addiction, grief, and corruption on top, captivating from the very first page, refusing to let go until the very last. And so much of this aforementioned sense of dread lies within Marino's wonderful ability to make the character hyper-aware of all the details around her, and the morbid way in which he describes everything through her eyes.
What really impresses me, is that the author's bio claims this is Andy Marino's first horror novel. Well, damn, I was about to say that I certainly hope it's not his last, because this is one hell of a horror debut; fortunately, as far as I can see, among all the other books he's written, at least one more of them is horror. So I'm definitely reading that one at some point!