The territory that was long ago ceded to Stephen King—ghostly goings-on in rural Maine—is entered to stunning effect in this absorbing tale of demonic possession, by the author of Sister Wolf (1980) and Group Sex (1986). Pragmatic and “sensible” Cora Whitman, wife of Episcopal priest Henry Lieber, tells in retrospect the story of Henry’s ministry in the town of Dry Falls, in south-central Maine, during the summer of 1974, when a killing heat wave and drought presage a frightening reversal of the natural order. Farm animals bear deformed offspring. A woman known to believe in the occult unaccountably “loses” part of a day. Two boarding-school girls playing at “witchcraft” see a mysterious figure lurking in a graveyard; “six girls” attending the same school are “discovered prostrate on their dormitory beds, naked and stupefied.” A nude sunbather is attended by a large black dog that appears as if from nowhere. Husbands inexplicably take sexual leave of their wives; then, as suddenly, become sexually insatiable. And, despite her tartly declared “low threshold of tolerance for anything mysterious,” Cora herself is “visited” by a presence whose shape and substance Arensberg teasingly discloses in a beautifully paced sequence of disturbingly hallucinatory scenes. But this is much more than a horror story. Henry Lieber’s “calling” to serve God is itself an unexplained phenomenon, as is the sudden aridity that afflicts his marriage. Both he and Cora are fully imagined, complex characters, and Arensberg’s unflinching analyses of their vacillating mutual understanding and intimacy, as well as of Cora’s tense relationships with her troubled mother Emily and sister Hannah, imbue this vivid story with an overlay of psychological realism that makes its (genuinely) supernatural dimension all the more horrific and threatening. As much as it transcends its genre, this is nonetheless one of the finest contemporary novels of the supernatural—the best since Clive Barker’s The Damnation Game. (Book-of-the-Month selection)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-394-55696-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s...
The traumatic homecoming of a wounded warrior.
The daughter of alcoholics who left her orphaned at 17, Jolene “Jo” Zarkades found her first stable family in the military: She’s served over two decades, first in the army, later with the National Guard. A helicopter pilot stationed near Seattle, Jo copes as competently at home, raising two daughters, Betsy and Lulu, while trying to dismiss her husband Michael’s increasing emotional distance. Jo’s mettle is sorely tested when Michael informs her flatly that he no longer loves her. Four-year-old Lulu clamors for attention while preteen Betsy, mean-girl-in-training, dismisses as dweeby her former best friend, Seth, son of Jo’s confidante and fellow pilot, Tami. Amid these challenges comes the ultimate one: Jo and Tami are deployed to Iraq. Michael, with the help of his mother, has to take over the household duties, and he rapidly learns that parenting is much harder than his wife made it look. As Michael prepares to defend a PTSD-afflicted veteran charged with Murder I for killing his wife during a dissociative blackout, he begins to understand what Jolene is facing and to revisit his true feelings for her. When her helicopter is shot down under insurgent fire, Jo rescues Tami from the wreck, but a young crewman is killed. Tami remains in a coma and Jo, whose leg has been amputated, returns home to a difficult rehabilitation on several fronts. Her nightmares in which she relives the crash and other horrors she witnessed, and her pain, have turned Jo into a person her daughters now fear (which in the case of bratty Betsy may not be such a bad thing). Jo can't forgive Michael for his rash words. Worse, she is beginning to remind Michael more and more of his homicide client. Characterization can be cursory: Michael’s earlier callousness, left largely unexplained, undercuts the pathos of his later change of heart.
Less bleak than the subject matter might warrant—Hannah’s default outlook is sunny—but still, a wrenching depiction of war’s aftermath.Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57720-9
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 18, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
A treat for fans of The Evil Dead or Zombieland, complete with affordable solutions for better living.
A hardy band of big-box retail employees must dig down for their personal courage when ghosts begin stalking them through home furnishings.
You have to give it up for the wave of paranormal novels that have plagued the last decade in literature; at least they’ve made writers up their games when it comes to finding new settings in which to plot their scary moments. That’s the case with this clever little horror story from longtime pop-culture journalist Hendrix (Satan Loves You, 2012, etc.). Set inside a disturbingly familiar Scandinavian furniture superstore in Cleveland called Orsk, the book starts as a Palahniuk-tinged satire about the things we own—the novel is even wrapped in the form of a retail catalog complete with product illustrations. Our main protagonist is Amy, an aimless 24-year-old retail clerk. She and an elderly co-worker, Ruth Anne, are recruited by their anal-retentive boss, Basil (a closet geek), to investigate a series of strange breakages by walking the showroom floor overnight. They quickly uncover two other co-workers, Matt and Trinity, who have stayed in the store to film a reality show called Ghost Bomb in hopes of catching a spirit on tape. It’s cute and quite funny in a Scooby Doo kind of way until they run across Carl, a homeless squatter who's just trying to catch a break. Following an impromptu séance, Carl is possessed by an evil spirit and cuts his own throat. It turns out the Orsk store was built on the remains of a brutal prison called the Cuyahoga Panopticon, and its former warden, Josiah Worth, has returned from the dead to start up operations again. It sounds like an absurd setting for a haunted-house novel, but Hendrix makes it work to the story’s advantage, turning the psychological manipulations and scripted experiences that are inherent to the retail experience into a sinister fight for survival.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-59474-526-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Quirk Books
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
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