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quadrille 's review for:
American Elsewhere
by Robert Jackson Bennett
What happens when eldritch horrors fall in love with the kitschy 1950s American Dream? Terrible, terrible things, that's what.
The premise in a nutshell: Mona Bright, former cop, inherits her mother's old house in a small New Mexico town that no one's ever heard of. She goes there to find out more about the mother who died when she was a child, only to discover that in Wink, things are very much not as they seem.
I've heard this described as "Twin Peaks meets Lovecraft". I'm still loving reading RJB's books in order, because I can spot some recurring themes/interests from previous works: family, parents and their children (but this time motherhood instead of fatherhood); other worlds and universes; a layer of something unreal and unpleasant ghosting beneath the mundane; and, most importantly because this is a thing that I love unabashedly: inhuman things wearing human skins. Some of the... people in Wink reminded me so much of the wolves in The Troupe: earnest, going through the motions, wearing their uncanny masks, imitating humanity. This is about what happens when two worlds collide, and how imitation can be flattery, and people try to fit where they don't fit at all (square pegs in round holes), and it's about making do, and finding happiness.
Mona Bright is a fantastic protagonist: a WOC who's tough and tomboyish but without sounding like a chick with a dick. The maternal themes come out fabulously with her, and really, this book is all about mothers. People keep asking Mona why she's moved to Wink (and thus inadvertently set so many balls rolling in the plot), and if it's really just because she wants to find out more about her mother, and the answer is always this: Yes.
Strangely enough (or not so strangely?), my favourite characters by the end of the book were not the ones I expected from the beginning. At all. Quite the opposite. The ones I initially feared or disliked became fond, beloved characters, since there were so many reversals over the course of the book -- which only makes sense, since it's a massive brick of a book, so goddamnit Bennett for making me lug 600+ pages around on the subway. Totally worth it, though.
It takes some time for the horrific action to get rolling -- the first half or so (ishh) is a slow buildup, murder mysteries and small towns and getting to know Wink, marinating in the loveliness of the place before the curtain is ripped aside. That said, there's obviously always been something off about the town from the very start. (And god, how creepy some of those sequences are!) It just takes some time for the full warts to show. And when they do, hoo boy.
Tangentially: I've had some conversations with friends (holla Jane, Angela) about Shirley Jackson's writing, and how she taps into the horror of mundane domesticity and women trapped in their circumstances -- and I think that connects strangely well to American Elsewhere, considering its interest in '50s values turned on their head (Wink is almost quite literally a snapshot trapped in time, unable to progress beyond that decade). See: one of the background characters, a lesbian trapped in a loveless, unhappy marriage. The horror of her situation has comparatively very little to do with the extra-dimensional forces besetting the town; her story is real, and something that has happened, and does happen.
I can't decide between a 4 or a 5, largely because I loved The Troupe so fucking much, and this one, oddly, didn't creep me out quite as much. (I think it has something to do with the difference in protagonists: Mona gets in some terrible spots of trouble, but she's a grown-ass woman with a gun and I always had faith that she would be able to take care of herself. And not to mention, she had some Very Powerful People pulling for her.) But it's just a different book: it goes in some different places, and takes a bigger, more cosmic and alien scope in order to explore intimate themes of familyhood, home, and the pursuit of happiness (which is naturally connected to the American Dream™).
Recommended to anyone who likes small-town horror, Twin Peaks, Lovecraft, The Twilight Zone, Welcome to Night Vale, and... probably other things I'm forgetting.
/seriously tl;dr review
The premise in a nutshell: Mona Bright, former cop, inherits her mother's old house in a small New Mexico town that no one's ever heard of. She goes there to find out more about the mother who died when she was a child, only to discover that in Wink, things are very much not as they seem.
I've heard this described as "Twin Peaks meets Lovecraft". I'm still loving reading RJB's books in order, because I can spot some recurring themes/interests from previous works: family, parents and their children (but this time motherhood instead of fatherhood); other worlds and universes; a layer of something unreal and unpleasant ghosting beneath the mundane; and, most importantly because this is a thing that I love unabashedly: inhuman things wearing human skins. Some of the... people in Wink reminded me so much of the wolves in The Troupe: earnest, going through the motions, wearing their uncanny masks, imitating humanity. This is about what happens when two worlds collide, and how imitation can be flattery, and people try to fit where they don't fit at all (square pegs in round holes), and it's about making do, and finding happiness.
Mona Bright is a fantastic protagonist: a WOC who's tough and tomboyish but without sounding like a chick with a dick. The maternal themes come out fabulously with her, and really, this book is all about mothers. People keep asking Mona why she's moved to Wink (and thus inadvertently set so many balls rolling in the plot), and if it's really just because she wants to find out more about her mother, and the answer is always this: Yes.
Strangely enough (or not so strangely?), my favourite characters by the end of the book were not the ones I expected from the beginning. At all. Quite the opposite. The ones I initially feared or disliked became fond, beloved characters, since there were so many reversals over the course of the book -- which only makes sense, since it's a massive brick of a book, so goddamnit Bennett for making me lug 600+ pages around on the subway. Totally worth it, though.
It takes some time for the horrific action to get rolling -- the first half or so (ishh) is a slow buildup, murder mysteries and small towns and getting to know Wink, marinating in the loveliness of the place before the curtain is ripped aside. That said, there's obviously always been something off about the town from the very start. (And god, how creepy some of those sequences are!) It just takes some time for the full warts to show. And when they do, hoo boy.
Tangentially: I've had some conversations with friends (holla Jane, Angela) about Shirley Jackson's writing, and how she taps into the horror of mundane domesticity and women trapped in their circumstances -- and I think that connects strangely well to American Elsewhere, considering its interest in '50s values turned on their head (Wink is almost quite literally a snapshot trapped in time, unable to progress beyond that decade). See: one of the background characters, a lesbian trapped in a loveless, unhappy marriage. The horror of her situation has comparatively very little to do with the extra-dimensional forces besetting the town; her story is real, and something that has happened, and does happen.
I can't decide between a 4 or a 5, largely because I loved The Troupe so fucking much, and this one, oddly, didn't creep me out quite as much. (I think it has something to do with the difference in protagonists: Mona gets in some terrible spots of trouble, but she's a grown-ass woman with a gun and I always had faith that she would be able to take care of herself. And not to mention, she had some Very Powerful People pulling for her.) But it's just a different book: it goes in some different places, and takes a bigger, more cosmic and alien scope in order to explore intimate themes of familyhood, home, and the pursuit of happiness (which is naturally connected to the American Dream™).
Recommended to anyone who likes small-town horror, Twin Peaks, Lovecraft, The Twilight Zone, Welcome to Night Vale, and... probably other things I'm forgetting.
/seriously tl;dr review