Ever-intelligent horror novelist Monahan (The Blood of the Covenant, 1995, etc.) retells a true story—true as far as the participants knew—about a poltergeist. The book purports to be a recently discovered manuscript written by Richard Powell, an eyewitness of the Bell Witch haunting in Robertson County, Tennessee, 181721. Monahan says that his first skeptical reading of the manuscript led him to six books confirming the authenticity of the events. Indeed, Richard Powell, the long-dead narrator, is himself a skeptic who seems to know all the devices of poltergeists, and in particular how poltergeist activity within a home reflects a family's psychic torment. Poltergeists (racket-makers) do not attack from without but rather are a spiritual pustule erupting from within a deeply troubled household. The poltergeist in this case seemed set on doing away with John Bell, the head of the family, while at the same time gradually evolving a rather homey tie with the other family members that lasted for three years and was witnessed by many. The spirit first showed up as something invisible gnawing nightly on bedposts, raining rocks on the roof, ripping covers off beds, and repeatedly slapping 12-year-old Betsy Bell and pulling her across the floor by her hair. At times the spirit allowed itself to be touched; it gathered news from afar for the family; lectured on theology; sang sweetly in four different voices; and rescued children in trouble. For three years, the spirit joked, lectured, ran off frauds and charlatans, and even nursed Bell's sick wife, producing nuts and berries for the invalid out of thin air. Even so, it afflicted the father with palsy, tics, and neuralgia, and at last watched him die. What produced the poltergeist? It's unfair to reveal here Monahan's reasonable yet supernatural answer. More artful, if less exciting, than Monahan's brainy bloodsucker operas—but all immensely satisfying.
Pub Date: March 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15061-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.
Devastated by her mother’s death, Brett Bohlinger consumes a bottle of outrageously expensive Champagne and trips down the stairs at the funeral luncheon. Add embarrassed to devastated. Could things get any worse? Of course they can, and they do—at the reading of the will.
Instead of inheriting the position of CEO at the family’s cosmetics firm—a position she has been groomed for—she’s given a life list she wrote when she was 14 and an ultimatum: Complete the goals, or lose her inheritance. Luckily, her mother, Elizabeth, has crossed off some of the more whimsical goals, including running with the bulls—too risky! Having a child, buying a horse, building a relationship with her (dead) father, however, all remain. Brad, the handsome attorney charged with making sure Brett achieves her goals, doles out a letter from her mother with each success. Warmly comforting, Elizabeth’s letters uncannily—and quite humorously—predict Brett’s side of the conversations. Brett grudgingly begins by performing at a local comedy club, an experience that proves both humiliating and instructive: Perfection is overrated, and taking risks is exhilarating. Becoming an awesome teacher, however, seems impossible given her utter lack of classroom management skills. Teaching homebound children offers surprising rewards, though. Along Brett’s journey, many of the friends (and family) she thought would support her instead betray her. Luckily, Brett’s new life is populated with quirky, sharply drawn characters, including a pregnant high school student living in a homeless shelter, a psychiatrist with plenty of time to chat about troubled children, and one of her mother’s dearest, most secret companions. A 10-step program for the grief-stricken, Brett’s quest brings her back to love, the best inheritance of all.
Spielman’s debut charms as Brett briskly careens from catastrophe to disaster to enlightenment.Pub Date: July 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-54087-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Twenty New England horror shorts by Stephen King (and a painfully lofty introduction by old pro John D. MacDonald). King, of course, is the 30-year-old zillionaire who poured the pig's blood on Carrie, woke the living dead in 'Salem's Lot, and gave a bad name to precognition in The Shining. The present collection rounds up his magazine pieces, mainly from Cavalier, and also offers nine stories not previously published. He is as effective in the horror vignette as in the novel. His big opening tale, "Jerusalem's Lot"—about a deserted village—is obviously his first shot at 'Salem's Lot and, in its dependence on a gigantic worm out of Poe and Lovecraft, it misses the novel's gorged frenzy of Vampireville. But most of the other tales go straight through you like rats' fangs. "Graveyard Shift" is about cleaning out a long unused factory basement that has a subbasement—a hideous colony of fat giant blind legless rats that are mutating into bats. It's a story you may wish you hadn't read. You'll enjoy the laundry mangle that becomes possessed and begins pressing people into bedsheets (don't think about that too much), a flu bug that destroys mankind and leaves only a beach blanket party of teenagers ("Night Surf"), and a beautiful lady vampire and her seven-year-old daughter abroad in a Maine blizzard ("One for the Road"). Bizarre dripperies, straight out of Tales from the Crypt comics. . . a leprous distillation.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1977
ISBN: 0385129912
Page Count: 367
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1977
BOOK TO SCREEN
Stephen King’s “Jerusalem’s Lot” to Be Epix Show
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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