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Book Review: Inspection by Josh Malerman

Inspection by Josh Malerman

Del Rey, 2019

ISBN-13: 978-1524796990

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition, audiobook

 

Hot on the heels of the biggest Netflix movie of all time, Bird Box, Josh Malerman is poised to continue his climb to stardom in this stellar new novel, a strange story that takes a left turn through the woods of Michigan instead of following a well-trodden road.

For anyone who has read him, Malerman a refreshing read because he eschews the normal, refusing  to follow formula: he entertains  readers. as well as forcing them to think. Bird Box, Malerman’s first novel, has been followed by Black Mad Wheel (music was the antagonist, allegedly), Goblin (a connected set of stories), and Unbury Carol (a western/horror/romance),

Inspection may remind some of 1984 or The Giver. The premise is that two towers exist in the forest, each just barely out of sight of the other. Within each, 26 students are raised from birth, given names of simply letters. The Alphabet Boys. The Letter Girls.  Neither is aware the other sex exists. The leaders of the experiment, D.A.D. and M.O.M., train their prodigies in several subjects, the arts, and more, honing the twelve-year-olds for mysterious lives.

The initial sections force the reader to push past the typical storytelling format, as the characters and setting require an intricate set up. Assigning each student only a letter for a name accomplishes both identity and sameness, the reason of which will reveal itself in layers. The schooling and activities impressed upon the students are mindbending and brutal: bizarre games and social events that twist in logic and morality.

J suspects something exists beyond the borders of his world when he sees a shadowy figure beyond a tree in the yard. It sends him on a journey that will alter him in ways he never thought possible, changing how he views his compartmentalized world. When a strange book lands on the students’ beds one day, one that reveals the truths about life outside of the school, the walls begin to crumble and terror of a new kind creeps into the students’ lives, one that could send them to “the corner,” a place from where no one has ever returned.

K embarks on a similar path, one that will bring her to a world she never knew existed.

Inspection will challenge readers. The result of Malerman’s story is a rewarding psychological journey that is guaranteed to garner him new readers and please his fans. His examination of the human condition, and of the “nature vs. nurture” debate, is relevant to the educational system and parenting today’s youth.

Finding a genre that fits this story will be a tough task, but one that should be determined by each reader. Inspection is destined to become one of the most talked about novels of 2019– and  it should be. Recommended.

 

Reviewed by Dave Simms

Posted on March 19, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Sleeping with the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror by Darryl Jones

Sleeping with the Lights On: The Unsettling Story of Horror by Darryl Jones

Oxford University Press, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-0198826484

Available: Hardcover, Kindle edition

 

In Sleeping with the Lights On, Darryl Jones addresses the origins and evolution of horror, and provides a brief but wide-ranging, descriptive overview of the relationship of violence, taboo, and fear to culture, society, and storytelling that will provide newcomers with a readable and easy-to-understand guide to the horror genre’s major terms, critiques, subgenres, and tropes addressed in both lay and academic literature. Those more familiar with the horror genre, may be acquainted with many of the ideas and criticisms, but Jones organizes the information effectively. In his introduction, he starts by tracking the origins of horror through early literature, religion, and myth, following through to the present day and making predictions about the future of horror. He provides clear explanations of terror, horror, the Gothic, the uncanny, and the weird, citing major, primary sources for their origins and definitions, and argues that changing cultural anxieties inform the development of the horror genre. Further chapters discuss major branches of the horror genre: monsters, the occult and supernatural, horror and the body (this includes transformation and cannibalism as well as body horror), horror and the mind (focused on madness, doppelgangers, serial killers, and slashers), and mad science.

In each of these chapters, Jones explores the breadth of the topic by first addressing the general concept (monstrosity, in the chapter on monsters) and then getting more specific and discussing critiques and analyses of how their representations and meanings  have changed with the times, through a more specific examination (in this case, of the representation of cannibals, vampires, and zombies in society, culture, history, and literature). Although he is able to address these only briefly, it is clear that his knowledge is deep as well as wide.

An afterword discusses post-millenial horror and Jones’ predictions for the future of horror. Noting that one of horror’s defining characteristics is its existence on the margins and manipulation of boundaries, he observes that its recently gained respectability in academic circles and the way it is now marketed to mainstream popular culture may be compromising its transgressiveness. Jones coins the term “unhorror” to describe movies that use horror tropes, sometimes exaggeratedly, and using computer-generated effects, without actually being horrific (he seems to be focused on recent kaiju movies, which do definitely differ in tone depending on who is making them. I don’t think anyone can say that Shin Godzilla is “unhorror” despite its CGI, though) and introduces “Happy Gothic”,  which uses a Gothic mode but in a romantic, whimsical way.

Jones also notes that recent storytelling in the genre is rooted in cultural anxieties about economic, ecological, racial, technological, and political horrors, all of which are very real parts of people’s lives right now, as well as a return to “old-school horror”, but that Asian and Hispanic horror are also having a major impact on the genre, as well as television, podcasts, and Internet memes such as Slender Man. Jones concludes that horror is expanding past the page and movie screen directly in front of our faces, to include new voices and new fears in ways that, at this time, we can’t even imagine.

As this is a short book, it really isn’t possible to cover everything, and I feel like Jones maybe stretched himself a little too far in trying to include as much as he did, especially in his afterword. He devotes just a few sentences to YA horror and paranormal romance(entire books have been written about this), and a few to the “Happy Gothic”, without really elaborating or providing examples (I have never heard of this and now I am curious). His attempt to describe “unhorror” was fragmented as well. He just didn’t have the space for everything I think he would have liked to have said, so the end felt a little unfinished.  I was also a little frustrated with the index. While it lists authors and titles of books and movies cited, movies were not always identified by the date (there are a number of movies titled Godzilla, for example) and terms defined in the text were not always included (abjection, taboo, and sublime, for instance). This is less of a big deal if you have a paper copy that you can just flip through, but doing that on the Kindle is more difficult. The “further reading” section was also difficult for me to read, and I would have liked a little space between citations. These are minor quibbles, though.

This is a great book for anyone looking for background on the genre or arguments for its validity, or who is just interested in the topic, and especially for newcomers seeking a good overview of the horror genre in literature and cinema. Highly recommended.

 

Posted on February 9, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen

Why Horror Seduces by Mathias Clasen

Oxford University Press, 2017

ISBN-13: 978-0190666514

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

I first came across Mathias Clasen’s article “Can’t Sleep: Clowns Will Eat Me: Telling Scary Stories on Academia.edu several years ago, and right then I thought “Here’s some original thinking– this is someone to watch” (I also liked that he wrote about literature– a lot of horror scholarship focuses on only movies). I was excited to discover that Clasen has now published a book that sums up much of his research, and takes it further. Clasen sees enjoyment of horror fiction as an evolutionary adaptation. Rather than using one of the traditional approaches of literary criticism, Clasen pursues a different one, the biocultural approach, which integrates evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences with literary study. He argues that to answer questions about why people seek out horror fiction and entertainment, researchers must have a “scientific understanding of how the mind works”, and therefore that an understanding of evolutionary history is necessary for an understanding of horror, which frames how a specific work is situated in a cultural context.

The first part of the book introduces the horror genre and academic approaches that have been and are used to analyze horror fiction in the past; then Clasen explains his own framework, and how he has applied his knowledge of evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and social sciences to explain why people react to fiction and engage with stories.  He narrows in from engagement with stories and fiction in general to a more specific focus on horror. Summed up, he believes that people seek out horror fiction because it’s engaging and because human beings are both naturally fearful and relatively vulnerable to the dangers of the world– so horror is a safe way to experience what we fear without putting ourselves in physical danger.

In the second section, Clasen provides a brief overview of 20th century American horror fiction and then engages in analysis of specific works, noting how each is rooted in cultural anxieties and fears from its time, but that looking at it from an evolutionary perspective can reveal why these works continue to resonate with today’s readers and audiences. His readings of these works ( the films Jaws, Night of the Living Dead, Halloween, and the Blair Witch Project; and the books Jaws, Rosemary’s Baby, I Am Legend, and The Shining)are examples of the kinds of analysis possible using his suggested biocultural approach, and they’re also really interesting to read. Learning about The Blair Witch Project’s transmedia success was pretty cool, but discovering that the directors actually left the actors in the woods for several days to get authentic reactions was disturbing. However, as interesting as I found these, I felt that it probably wasn’t necessary to have as many close readings as he did. Eight was more than enough.

The third section of the book contains Clasen’s theories on the future of horror. I find it interesting that, while he expects technology to make horror more and more immersive, and haunted house experiences to get scarier and scarier, that he thinks these experiences will appeal to mainly niche audiences, as the majority of horror lovers want to experience it vicariously, with distance between themselves and the horrific event. Horror fiction and cinema will continue to be the most popular forms of media for most people.

Finally, Clasen calls for further research on horror, including  a variety of research approaches that can stand up to scientific scrutiny and that cross disciplines, such as mining big data, case studies, observational studies, biofeedback and neuroimaging studies, experimental lab studies, and so on. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a brain as crowded with ideas as his must be!

This is an academic book, and sometimes those can be dry, but that is not the case here. Clasen is clearly passionate and knowledgeable about his topic and his approach.  I’ve done research on reading engagement in the past, and there is definitely neuroscience involved in the process of learning to read independently. I feel like this biocultural approach to examining horror fiction and why people engage with it, is on the right track, and I encourage anyone who is interested in the topic to try this out (right now it’s relatively reasonably priced on Kindle) or at least to seek out his papers on Academia.edu.  Recommended.

 

 

Posted on May 16, 2018 by , Reply
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