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A review by motherofallbats
The Auctioneer (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Joan Samson
5.0
Like most modern readers I found out about this book from Grady Hendrix's Paperbacks From Hell, and I really feel the need to send Mr. Hendrix a fruit basket or something for introducing me to this absolute powerhouse! The author's premature death shortly after publication makes it understandable that this book became so obscure so quickly, but that doesn't make it any less of a shame. If there were any justice, this would be known as a seminal horror title mentioned in the same breath as Rosemary's Baby and The Exorcist, and Perly Dunsmore would have the same instantaneous name recognition as Hannibal Lecter and Anton Chigurh.
The comparison to Shirley Jackson's The Lottery feels like a copout, but it is accurate. Like Jackson's writing, Samson's story has nothing physically explicit or overtly supernatural, but it ratchets up the tension and uncomfortableness to an unbearable level (Hendrix also compares Samson to Cormac McCarthy, which I can also see; although her prose isn't as poetic as McCarthy's, it conveys the same type of utter brittleness and desolation). Unlike The Lottery, which has the (dis)advantage of being a single short story, The Auctioneer stretches its story out to novel-length and forces you to really sit there in the abject horror and contemplate your own response -- I think John made some incredibly stupid choices, yes, but at the end of the day, would I have made any better ones myself? My edition runs less than 230 pages and it took me about twice as long to read this as it normally would a book of this length just because there was only so much I could take in one sitting.
Read this. Discover it. Samson deserves the widespread love and critical appraisal now that she was denied in life.
The comparison to Shirley Jackson's The Lottery feels like a copout, but it is accurate. Like Jackson's writing, Samson's story has nothing physically explicit or overtly supernatural, but it ratchets up the tension and uncomfortableness to an unbearable level (Hendrix also compares Samson to Cormac McCarthy, which I can also see; although her prose isn't as poetic as McCarthy's, it conveys the same type of utter brittleness and desolation). Unlike The Lottery, which has the (dis)advantage of being a single short story, The Auctioneer stretches its story out to novel-length and forces you to really sit there in the abject horror and contemplate your own response -- I think John made some incredibly stupid choices, yes, but at the end of the day, would I have made any better ones myself? My edition runs less than 230 pages and it took me about twice as long to read this as it normally would a book of this length just because there was only so much I could take in one sitting.
Read this. Discover it. Samson deserves the widespread love and critical appraisal now that she was denied in life.