THE LIVING ONE

An 800-pound gorilla of a horror novel: the powerful, unpredictable, and dreadfully self-indulgent tale of a centuries- old entity. First-novelist Gannett, a former waiter, is that rarity in horror, a serious (if undisciplined) stylist with original ideas as well. His story builds through 59 letters, diary fragments, ``chronicles,'' and so on, told in myriad voices—including those of teenager Torrance Spoor; Torrance's impossibly rich father, Malcolm; Sheila Massif, Torrance's schoolteacher; and Duane Allbright, a psychic. Torrance has been called away from his mom in California to live with his dad in a mansion overlooking the Atlantic; also living there are an eccentric valet, Pip; 12 ferocious hounds with hypnotic eyes; and a hothouse of sentient roses. Torrance, who's gay—there's explicit gay as well as hetero sex here—suspects that his father is a voyeur: Why else the hidden cameras trained on Torrance at all times? But soon a far worse truth unveils: Malcolm is the ``Living One,'' an entity of great psychic powers cursed from medieval times to immortality by fathering a son, then trading bodies with the son and murdering the paternal body in which the son is now trapped, generation after generation—with Torrance as new sacrifice. Turning to Sheila for help, Torrance impregnates her—and draws the attention of Duane, her lover, who realizes that Pip, the roses, and the dogs are key to Malcolm's powers. The action—and overripe prose (``I do not know. I do not know! And the pistol, where is it? He did not bring it! A knife, a knife I could find, oh I am feeling ill!'')—swells to a melodramatic crescendo that twists into new life for Malcolm and Torrance—and an uncertain future. Gannett has talent to burn—and sets fire to much of it here. Wild, imaginative, and vastly overwritten, his novel enthralls yet infuriates—and leaves one yearning for his next.