John Farris (1) (1936–)

What a damn trainwreck. 283 pages. A book I should have barreled through in a day, and instead, it took me far longer than I ever anticipated. I haven't read a Farris book in probably 40 years, but remember the ones I did read with fondness, which is why I decided to seek out a few more and dig in.

This likely wasn't the one to kick off that endeavour.

It takes virtually half the novel for the story to kick in to gear. There's far, far too much detail and description, and characters that are given way too many pages (I'm looking at you, Neddie) when, in the end, they essentially add nothing to the plot.

Important scenes have presumably been left on the cutting room floor. Seriously. Stuff happens and I flipped back through the pages to see if, in my boredom, I'd missed them. Nope. Shit happened off-stage. So, instead, we get details of buildings, hotels, tourist areas, bicycling events, but we don't see important, plot-impacting events. What the hell, John?

And then the end comes barreling at the reader with virtually no warning. I think the entire structure of this story is flawed. Things that were held back--presumably to keep the reader wondering, or in suspense, or for sheer shits and giggles--could have been coughed up instead of the confusing prologue we got.

So, yeah, in the end, I'm a touch reluctant to dig into another Farris novel, but I will. Hell, the next one's gotta be better than this one, right?

Right?… (meer)

Another book pulled from the wayback machine. It's funny that I remember exactly where and when I read this (August 1977, I was 15 and at a cottage my uncle borrowed from a friend for the week), but only truly remembered one scene from the book, when Gwyn uses the hash oil on herself and then has sex with Robin--not surprising, considering Robin was the same age as me, and I was a bit of a horny kid at that age (aren't we all?).

So, it was a pleasant surprise to come back to this book 39 1/2 years later and find it really enjoyable. I was a little worried having recently shelved a couple of later Farris novels without finishing them. But this one had a nicely complex plot, some interesting characters, and some deep research into the subject matter. I guess what I'm trying to say is, Farris did his homework, and between that and his higher-brow writing style really elevated this story beyond the standard horror potboilers released around the same time.

If I could change anything, I'd change three things.

First and foremost, there's some dreadful spelling errors and, in at least one case, an entire opening line to a scene is missing. This book suffered from some of the more heinous sloppy editing/printing than was the norm for the time, I think.

The second would be to perhaps dial back a touch on some of the description and dream sequences and tangents, and instead show us some of the in-between growth or changes to Robin in his 18 months in custody with Gwyn. We see some of the beginning, then skip the better part of a year and find a very different person at the end.

Finally, Farris--assuming this isn't more printing errors where they mixed up page orders--makes some puzzling jumps around in time, sometimes shooting forward, then going back again. For this one, aside from relating some background info, I think a more-or-less chronological approach may have served the story a bit better.

Overall though, I truly enjoyed this novel--enough to consider reading its follow-up, [b:The Fury and the Terror|699465|The Fury and the Terror|John Farris|http://images.gr-assets.com/books/1312060603s/699465.jpg|1469032] shortly. At times, this novel reminded me of the Joe Ledger series by Jonathan Maberry. I'd even go so far as to say Maberry owes a debt of thanks to Farris for giving him a bit of a blueprint for Joe.

Recommended...even if it is 40 years old.

One final story that has nothing to do with the book, but it's kind of funny. Back around 1980 or so, I was over at a friend's place with a bunch of buddies. We'd just finished playing poker and were channel surfing (all three channels) to see if there was anything on. We came across Brian De Palma's movie version of The Fury. All I remember is the end, where Amy Irving (as Gillian) makes John Cassavettes (Childress - Childermass in the novel) explode.

My memory may be a bit fogged, but I seem to remember that scene showing Cassavettes exploding from a couple of different angles. Regardless, dude exploded. Then, because it was network television, the scene abruptly cut to a commercial...for pizza.

We laughed for about ten minutes over that one.… (meer)

DNF.

I tried. I really tried on this one. I'm not sure what's stopping me from going any farther than 146 pages. The writing is above-grade, if a little overly wordy and descriptive. The characters and dialogue are done well.

But to me, it just feels like an author that's done with horror, and trying to stick a bit of it in, enough that the publisher can sell it as a horror novel, when it's really much more of a historical drama.

Even then, normally I could deal with that and carry on. But I just don't care about the central mystery at all.

So, I'm out.… (meer)