Yowza! Yowza! Yowza! If ever a book could grab my attention right from the first page, it was this one! For a very long time, I haveHe sees dead people.
Yowza! Yowza! Yowza! If ever a book could grab my attention right from the first page, it was this one! For a very long time, I have yearned for an author like Jess Kidd to appear: the ghosts of Dylan Thomas, Gabriel García Márquez and James Joyce must surely have come to roost in her beautiful, mischievous mind. This magical, vengeful story reconnected me with my Irishness and might possibly have brought my dear departed mother, Kathleen, scurrying to read it over my shoulder (she'd have loved this too). Mahoney, a libertine hippy with flared trousers you could mop a road with, arrives in the ghost-ridden Irish town of Mulderrig (shades of Llareggub). He has brooding looks and an easy charm: men want to be him, women want to be with him. Mahoney is a man on a secret mission, but he has walked into a viper pit of parochial mistrust and murderous secrets. By day Mulderrig appears respectable; a solid fat-ankled mammy dressed in patchworked fields. But at night she's gypsied to the nines, beringed and braceleted with fairy forts. Author Jess Kidd has an imagination gifted only to the few and writes in my favourite genre of magical realism. There really isn't a weak character to be found, and Mahoney's kindred spirit (caustic geriatric, Merle Cauley), is an absolute joy to behold. The humour is Guinness-dark and spiteful; there is a splendid scene towards the end where (view spoiler)[ Annie Farrell, the Black Widow, is attempting to smother Mrs Cauley with a pillow, when she is assailed by flying novels from the old lady's magical library. A large edition of War and Peace launches the counter-attack, knocking her to the floor, where she is set upon by The Complete Works of Jane Austen. Wonderful stuff! (hide spoiler)]
I felt compelled to dive into this wrathful-yet-charming story after noticing a host of friends' laudatory reviews and I'm so pleased I did. It was easily the best thing I've read in ages! Kidd's writing is altogether lyrical, bursting with imagery, delightfully irreverent, folkloric and devilishly humorous. This, my fellow Goodreaders, is Neil Gaiman for adults; I adored it from its dark, intriguing beginning to its heart-racing finale. Highly recommended, I LOVED it!...more
I’m ###typing% this with a frigging scarf* over£ my eyEs, so pLease# forgive @any typos+
Please, please don't do what I did, my fellow bookaneers. Do NOI’m ###typing% this with a frigging scarf* over£ my eyEs, so pLease# forgive @any typos+
Please, please don't do what I did, my fellow bookaneers. Do NOT watch the movie first. This is a big mistake; one to be avoided at all costs.
The story began pulse-like. Staccato sentences that suited the stop/start tempo of a life lived in fear. Malerman's Morse code narrative drew me in from the start. In an apocalyptic alternative reality, an abstract thing inhabits our planet; a demonic indescribable entity that, if gazed upon, will send a human to his or her death. Malorie, our beleaguered heroine, has no option but to embark on a twenty-mile river trip to possible safety, blindfolded and in a small rowing boat. To make matters worse, she has two small children on board who are also blindfolded. The kids, used to living life under instruction, never complain. They just do what they're told. Kept in the dark for much of their young lives, the children's hearing is acute and so the river becomes their amphitheatre. And this is where the book knocks spots off the movie. The book's raison d’être that humans must not see in order to survive is compromised in movie format because we, the viewer, can see, and so the fear of the unknown becomes diluted. Sound becomes so much a part of the book's DNA that I was almost listening to the pages!
Though not usually a lover of lean prose and meagre character development, this book kept me in its thrall. And hats off to the author for imagining such an original and terrifying premise. Granted, it has its inconsistencies, but the story was fraught, sensory and claustrophobic. I applaud John Malerman for hitting the ground running with a nail-biting debut horror-thriller and I dearly wish I hadn't seen the movie first....more
I read this book when it first surfaced, and you'd see a chorus line of black and orange covers, lined up like dominoes, oSo, who's telling the truth?
I read this book when it first surfaced, and you'd see a chorus line of black and orange covers, lined up like dominoes, on sun loungers the world over. Everyone and their dog has read Gone Girl (Please don't think that I'm willfully alienating non-reading dogs either).
From the off, you will find yourself second-guessing every tactical nuance in this well-devised and cleverly-forged thriller. Co-narrated by its two main protagonists, Amy and Nick Dunne (both annoying as hell and bereft of redeeming features), the story immediately weaves its web of intended deceit. Flynn deftly manipulated my opinion of each half of this mismatched couple, causing me to be certain in my sleuthery one moment, filled with self-doubt the next.
A slow-release capsule of damnatory revelations fizzes, spits and bubbles for three-quarters of the read, culminating in a dénouement that will always divide opinion (I personally felt that it dragged on for too long).
Readers of this book might also like The Liar's Chair by English author Rebecca Whitney. (A book with a similarly toxic relationship, and one which also plumbs psychological depths). https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Loading...
