Max Lieberman
Pulpy adventure science fiction like only Harrison could write it. “Serious” in that he’s not in Stainless Steel Rat or Bill, the Galactic Hero mode, but there’s plenty of satire here.
This isn’t literature, and it’s at least 60% escapism to help the ideas go down easy — every beautiful woman wants to sleep with the hero; there mustn’t be 10 pages that go by in the whole novel where he doesn’t have a drink or six.
But the villains are carefully chosen, and the gap between the world’s elites and its permanent underclass doesn’t seem as outlandish as it did upon publication (the treatment of Israel as basically heroic is also a snapshot in time).
Onwards to the sequel, Wheelworld.
Titling your novel "Horror Movie" is writing a big ol' Publisher's Clearing House check. Like Peter Straub's "Ghost Story," or Robert Evans' "Love Story," Tremblay is staking out an ambitious plot in a densely populated genre. He's arguably going even further, writing a book about that genre as it exists in an entirely different medium. I'm pleased to report that the check clears.
This novel is organized into three different sections, presented in rotating fashion so as to keep key plot revelations veiled.
First, the screenplay of the titular horror movie. The script, which was filmed but never released back in the mid-90s, is an elliptical genre vivisection laden with symbols that the book's narrator (mode: deeply unreliable; profession: horror convention "celebrity," trading on his notoriety from acting in said movie) suggests "add up to nothing." I'm not sure how this script would work if filmed, but as a narrative conceit to build dread and introduce us to its in-universe author, it kills.
Second, snarky observations about the experience of making a new, shinier, better financed version of the movie in the 2020s. The unnamed narrator comes across during these chapters as a stock jaded Gen X alternaguy. He's full of disdain for the successful people in front of him, and equally full of self-loathing, knowing that his persona and career is entirely the creation of his (more talented, less living) friends. There is, ultimately, more going on with him than we see here — but for most of the book, it's like reading a less-clever version of Chuck Klosterman. Horrifying indeed.
Third, memories about the making of the original movie, and fleeting glimpses of the narrator's life since then. The film itself was never finished, for the same reason that it is notorious, which is of course also why it's also being re-made/-booted/-financed by IP-hungry Hollywood 30 years later. Those secrets, too, are eventually revealed, and they're the most satisfying (and to me, the only truly emotionally moving) moments in the novel.
This was the first book by Tremblay that I've read, and I'll certainly seek out another.
Now, I'm not saying the prose in this book lurched awkwardly from clause to clause like an alien wearing human skin, but it did keep pausing in its narrative and saying "Give me sugar water." Hey, alright.
You want to talk characters? Hope you brought some flavor packets, because this cast has all the richness of unsalted oatmeal. I could barely tell their personalities apart.
No, no. I'm just kidding folks. Hey, thanks for coming out tonight.
I actually enjoyed this book. I got very excited when the first chapter featured a group of college students who had nicknamed themselves after famous mystery novelists. To my way of thinking, that's a shot across the bows — "I love the masters, but I'm going to give you something new."
This thing also moves. Premise, structure, deaths, clues, revelation. Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?
Ultimately, The Decagon House Murders delivers on its core promise, with a solid, plotty twist I've never read before (and didn't predict).
I could wish the pleasure of the book was less invested in that mechanical device, and more in building characters or detectives with some panache. I could suggest that there would be fewer fires on the island if the exposition wasn't so bone-dry. But those are counterfactuals.
There's a fun beach read here. Have at it.
There was a lot I enjoyed about this metafictional horror story about a pair of sisters who both write novels, and end up entangled with a demon who... also writes novels.
It's a nasty-spirited romp with a fair bit of gore, some colorful characters, and moments where I genuinely asked myself "what the fuck is going on?" It ends on a series of solid twists, with both comedy and tragedy running hot and cold.
Vandelly's prose can veer a bit purple, and she is one of those authors who insist on using any possible verb to avoid simply writing "she said." There are a few slow patches, when we are perhaps too alone with the protagonist and her verbose anxiety.
My only real disappointment with the book is the fault of my own expectations. When my friend described the, well, premise, I assumed there would be something Lovecraftian going on. Something in the vein of House of Leaves, but with an eldritch monstrosity of a book instead of a house; or akin to In the Mouth of Madness, but on the page instead of the screen. Sadly for me, that's not the tone. I'm not sure how it's possible to write a recursive story about an evil book, featuring body horror and a priest named "Father Madness," without a heavy dose of Lovecraft, Cronenberg, or Carpenter, but this is that book.
It's a good book nonetheless.
This reprint collection of comic-format game books starring the gritty antiheroes (or worse) of 2000 AD was a joy, and had me rolling dice at the breakfast table to get in one more game before starting work.
"What is it about the 2000 AD of 40 years ago that's so compelling?" is not a question that an American should try to answer. The knowing, self-mocking cynicism is part of it, and the sheer overwhelm of young talent who would go on to do even more great work in the decades since.
As for game books, I won't argue anything profound. They're shallow power fantasies with a bit of gambling and a bit of puzzle-solving mixed in, and that's simply fun. They're adventure games without software, and there's a bit of meta-fun in seeing how to construct a thing like that out of pulped wood and ink.
I'm not sure I would have paid cover price for the fun here, but I sure don't regret the library trip.
Could have worked as a fun confection had it been a short story collection in the vein of the first chapter. The sweaty commitment to a "cleverly" interconnected structure weighs down the central visual gimmick, while stretching the thin prose and characters past legibility or caring.
The book did my spark curiosity about Japanese mystery fiction more broadly, and I picked up The Decagon House Murders at the library. Probably next on my list.