An under-remarked facet of Stephen King’s genius is his eye. Like John Updike or Joseph Conrad, he sees more than we do, then carefully sets down what he sees, until a bright yellow bra strap or red lips moving in a black goatee become sharp, silvery hooks. Try and free yourself. The Outsider, in which that eye sees quite a bit, is at least two novels, imperfectly grafted. The first–and best–centers on a Little League baseball coach arrested for a terrible violation: the rape and murder […]
Monstrously creepy and I loved it
I read Shibuyama’s review of The Merry Spinster before I got into the book and braced myself for horror. I don’t like horror (I get nightmares easily, apparently) but I’d heard good things and still wanted to read it. This was a case of bracing myself and then it really not being as bad as I was thinking so yay! Played the expectations game and won. It helped that the book opens with a retelling of Hans Christian Anderson’s Little Mermaid, the OG little mermaid which is […]
Murky and Dim
This Fritz Leiber novel, published in 1977, seems both of and outside of its time. It appeared after The Exorcist, Rosemary’s Baby, and Carrie, three books that reinvigorated the genre, but it reaches back to earlier traditions. The slim but still overly long novel tells of Franz Westen, a San Francisco resident who catches sight, through his binoculars, of a strange form. After some scene-setting, he sets off to track the creature down. Looking back at his apartment through those same binoculars, he’s startled to […]
Way more involved than I originally anticipated, but still good!
I’m not entirely sure where to start this review. I guess I’ll start at the beginning, and how I got into reading this book. I’m one of those people who sees that a new movie / TV show is based on a book and wants to immediately read the book. It’s happened so far with: A Handmaid’s Tale, A Wrinkle in Time, The Darkest Minds, and this book. I’m sure there were others too! I always want to read the source material before I see […]