Rage - Stephen King

For those of you who were kind enough to enlighten me on Joe Hill's parentage: yes, I knew. I didn't mention it in my review of Heart Shaped Box because I didn't think that it should matter - the book is either good or it isn't, no matter who his dad was.

However, immediately after reading Joe Hill's book, I was fortunate enough to find this little gem in my local used book store: Rage, by Stephen King. It is only coincidence that I followed up Hill's HSB with a book by his father. I had been looking for Rage for well over a year now (it is out of print), and I found it the day I finished HSB. Coincidence? Yes. Fate? Maybe.

I won't review the book here, but I will recommend it highly. The book's main character, Charlie Decker, reminded me a lot of Holden Caulfield. In fact, the whole book had a very "Catcher in the Rye" feel. Granted, there are a lot of differences between Catcher and Rage, but if Hunter S. Thompson had written Catcher, and Holden had been on coke, then Rage probably would have been the result.

Sound interesting? Great! But if you are looking to read it soon, try looking for it under "B" (for Richard Bachman), as that was the pen-name King used when he wrote it. However, I'm told that King voluntarily had this book pulled off the market, so you may have difficulties (I sure did). I can kinda see why - the book has some similarities to the Columbine event, but was published over two decades prior, so King would have been equally justified to leave it alone. Doesn't matter, though, it was his book so it was his choice. I'm just glad I have a good used book store nearby…

Heart Shaped Box - by Joe Hill

Borders Books emailed me a 40% off coupon for Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box. I read the synopsis and was intrigued, and a quick web search later uncovered several positive pre-release reviews. It had been many years since I read an actual horror novel, so I figured what the hell and went out and bought it that day. I blew through this book quickly - the prose was snappy, the dialogue was sharp and witty, and the story was hard to put down.

The thing I liked most about HSB was the characters. The two main protagonists, the aging rockstar Jude and his girlfriend Georgia, were well realized, colorful, and I cared and feared for them. Jude jumped off the pages almost immediately, but it took a little time to get Georgia going. At first, I thought Georgia was just fodder for the ghost, but as the story grew and the situations became worse – she fleshed out as a character and showed that she was more than just a two dimensional, cookie-cutter rockstar girlfriend. I especially liked how Hill used the intense and desperate situations to build her character – instead of fading away or giving up and dying like I expected her to, she, instead, used these situations to show that even a Goth ex-stripper has true moral fiber.

As a horror novel, it was vibrant and imminently creepy. There were a few nights when this novel actually stole into my dreams and took control of them. For me, this is not an unusual occurrence - just about any book that I get heavily involved with will become part of my nightly dreams while I'm actively reading it. However, it's easy to shake off the after-effects of a dream concerning "The Hobbit." Not so much with HSB. A couple of nights I woke up, pulse racing and confused, only to find that I still couldn't quite discern reality from my dreams. This is an uneasy feeling when you still have sleep-cobwebs in your head and think you are really helping a rockstar and his girlfriend trying to escape a deranged, hypnotic ghost. One night when I was having a particularly frantic dream that was an interwoven mesh of my job horrors and the novel (not sure which was worse), my 2 year old daughter woke up screaming and bolted out of her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. I jolted awake and immediately darted into the hallway, where I found her lying, trembling visibly. When I picked her up and tried to comfort her, she just glanced towards her bedroom door and said, "there's something in there." Freaky, to say the least.

The very next night, I put her to bed and went to my bedroom to read. After an hour or so, the power went out. Complete darkness, daughter screaming, me running down the hallway and banging into the walls. I managed to feel my way to her without killing myself, and I'm glad I did, because she was one scared little girl. Luckily, I managed to calm her as we walked slowly into the hallway and then down the steps to the kitchen and the safety of the flashlight. I don't think my wife or my kid noticed, but I was one jumpy dad. I gave my wife the good flashlight and took my spare hiking headlamp and went on a house-wide search for every candle that we owned. We owned a lot, and I lit them all. I did get a few puzzled looks from my wife, and she commented, while looking at all the lit candles, that even though the electricity was out, we certainly didn't need to worry about getting cold.

Obviously, Hill did a good job at freaking me out on a mental level, which, for me, is why horror fiction is so much better than a movie. The book wasn't overtly psychological in a sense that it twisted your thoughts and made you insane. It focused more on the imagery, blending the ordinary - radios, televisions, computers, automobiles - with a hypnotic, macabre sense of danger and helplessness. His skill in delivering these scenes, and making them vivid and alive, was what impressed me the most.

HSB also punches the reader in the gut with hard action in heavy doses. Sometimes the action, especially in the first third of the novel, felt too frantic, like the characters were moving from the frying pan to the fire, and then back to the frying pan almost continuously. This may have been intentional and probably part of Hill's hook to get the story moving rapidly. It worked for me on some levels but towards the end of the first third of the book I was getting a little weary. That's just a minor nitpick, however, and the second third of the book balanced things a little better and started probing more into the depth of the characters, their backstories, and the story itself.

My only other complaint about the book was the ending. Without giving anything away, I'll just say that it was a little too... tidy... for my tastes. Don't get me wrong, though - the ending was good, but I like my endings to be more like a pile of dirt with a few bits and pieces of gemstones hidden inside. HSB ended like a good port and a cigar after a nice steak dinner.

While reading this novel I decided to peruse the internet and see what other reviewers had to say. I was enjoying the book very much, so perhaps I wanted a little validation. What I found was overwhelmingly positive - almost every reviewer was excited and impressed. They also expressed praise for Hills’ previous book of short stories - 20th Century Ghosts. I did find one negative comment about the book on someone's blog. I found it quite amusing:

I'm curious as to what part of this mess of a novel you found frightening. Was it the clichés that ran through it from literally the beginning to the end? (Ghosts driving sadistic cars is one that seems most pressing here.) I've never understood why genre fiction gets off the critical hook for doing the things literary fiction would be slapped over.

Hmmm… Where to start with this? Well, if you're going to give a ghost a car to drive, don't you think it would be a little more intimidating for him to drive a sadistic vehicle rather than a Vespa scooter? And while we are on the subject, the ghost's vehicle wasn't really that sadistic. It was an old truck. That it was driven by a sadistic ghost made it intimidating. Or is this reviewer trying to tell us that sadistic, mean-spirited ghosts and horrifying situations are cliché to a horror novel? Well, duh. Let's be honest, though: this comment wasn't about clichés. It was about genre vs. literary fiction. I thought the world got past that issue twenty years ago, but, apparently, the commenter is still a little insecure. Perhaps we should all give him a hug. Allow me to throw my own polarizing, intellectually dishonest jab into the ring: Why does literary fiction get off the critical hook for delivering such pretentious, god-awful stories that genre fiction would be slapped over?

Bottom line – I highly recommend this book, especially if you’re in the mood for a good, old-fashioned horror novel with many 21st century concepts and gadgets.