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The Off Season: A Victorian Sequel

Jack Cady

3.38 · Rating details · 66 ratings · 10 reviews

Compassionate, sly, powerful, and entertaining, The Off Season is a marvelous and magical new work from "a lasting voice in modern American literature". (Atlanta Constitution). Point Vestal suffers from an ancient curse--time operates differently with everyone. Victorian ghosts play pool with the tourists, buildings move on their own, and remorseful criminals commit the sa ...more

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Hardcover, 304 pages

Published November 1st 1995 by St. Martin's Press

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· 66 ratings · 10 reviews

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Nov 19, 2015 Lori rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: arc-reviewers-copy, fiction, has-ghosts-in-it, has-the-devil-in-it

Read 11/28/15 - 12/29/15
2 Stars - Recommended Lightly - It all just falls apart, like, the book practically disintegrated right there in my hands
Pages: 262
Publisher: Resurrection House/Underland Press
Published: July 2015

December was a tough reading month for me. All three of the books I started in late November failed to captivate me and dragged ass through most of this month. I ended up DNFing two of them, which upset me greatly. Deciding to chuck a book aside, no matter how much or little time Read 11/28/15 - 12/29/15
2 Stars - Recommended Lightly - It all just falls apart, like, the book practically disintegrated right there in my hands
Pages: 262
Publisher: Resurrection House/Underland Press
Published: July 2015

December was a tough reading month for me. All three of the books I started in late November failed to captivate me and dragged ass through most of this month. I ended up DNFing two of them, which upset me greatly. Deciding to chuck a book aside, no matter how much or little time I've invested into it, is never easy. So why did I chose to stick it out with Cady's The Off Season when it, too, wasn't exactly doing it for me? Of the three, the writing was less dense, I suppose. And Cady's style was just more inviting.

The premise was pretty cool too. Point Vestal, a town in which time acts differently. Where ghosts, easily identified by their incessant flickering and 19th century clothing, 'live' among the townsfolk and tourists. Some hold old jobs. Others are destined to repeat their brutal deaths week after week, month after month, year after year. And yet others appear and disappear with each time jump. (oh yes, the people of Point Vestal can find themselves unexpectedly walking through different time periods, seemingly at random.) But time jumping aside, it's a sleepy little place where nothing much seems to happen. Until a defrocked priest and his cat sidekick hitch a ride into town with 'ole August Starling, and take pity on his lost soul. With a simple whispered prayer, asking God to release August from his repetitive ghostly cycle, Joel-Andrew unwittingly unleashes a horrible evil and finds himself smack in the middle of a war between the living and the dead.

The book itself is actually being written as we read it, by a group of townspeople who have decided to share the "true" history of the town. The story, much like the town itself, jumps around in time and follows a sometimes dizzyingly non-linear path. We know something bad has happened. We know our narrators were part witness to, and partly played a role in, whatever it was that went down. And we just need to be patient as they work together to tell us all about it.

However, patience wasn't something I was willing to give. Cady really worked my nerves with this one. The book ebbed and flowed awkwardly. His writing was inconsistent and confusing at best. And at its worst? It felt like he didn't even know what he was trying to say. Some of the time, I found myself only capable of reading 5 pages at a time before putting it down out of boredom or frustration. On other, more rare occasions, I managed to get through a good thirty or so pages before I had the urge to drop it.

And those last forty pages or so - I'm looking at you,Chapters 30 through 33. They were basically one giant jerk-off. Cady worked himself into one hell of a tizzy with all that slow tease bullshit that he just couldn't contain himself there at the end. When all the tension between the townspeople and the newly 'freed' August Starling was finally brought to a head, it was absolute chaos. All the moving parts came together so hard and so fast, I felt like I was totally forgotten in the melee. The climax was all about Cady. And what Cady wanted. Fuck his readers. He shot his load all over those final chapters like no body's business. And I felt... gypped. And even more frustrated than I had been before. Sure, he tried to redeem himself in that final chapter, slowing things back down, rubbing our backs and 'there there'-ing us. But I was checked out at that point. It was too little, too late, I appreciate the gesture but....

And it would appear I am not the only one who felt Cady missed some opportunities, judging by the reviews on Goodreads. I don't know. I guess I'm glad I was able to break that horrible. month-long spell of not finishing anything, but god damn, did it have to be with a book that turned out to be such a disappointment?

Here's to hoping that the next spine I crack open is more... sensitive to my needs. ...more

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Jul 28, 2016 Benoit Lelièvre rated it liked it · review of another edition

Part of me really hated that book and part of me was awed by the rich, Miyazakian realm it created. There's a lot of negative review about that book and it's easy to see where they come from. First, it's an extremely complicated book with a narrative that's difficult to follow if you don't pay attention line by line, so you can never really settle into a reading groove. The author also seems very self-satisfied with his own culture and gimmicky imagery.

But...

Because there's always a but. I LOVED ...more

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Sep 06, 2015 Frances rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: novel, owned, fantasy, contemporary

This is an odd one; I keep thinking it's got the whimsy and fantastic elements of Beagle, or Bellairs THE FACE IN THE FROST, with the jumping around and opacity of Straub.

It's also got a certain distance to it ("Leaf, by Niggle", since we're doing comparisons).

It was interesting, it made me laugh a few times, and managed to upset me when it meant to upset me, but in the end I had trouble getting into this one. ...more

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Apr 18, 2010 Bob rated it did not like it · review of another edition

I have been 'suffering through' reading this book after reading Cady's "The Night We Buried Road Dog" in Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, and loving that effort. I rushed to amazon.com to see what else I could read from what I believed was my new favorite writer.

Well, I received 'The Off Season' in quick time and happily started reading.

It became evident that Cady's constant use of full multi-name characters' names and places takes up enough space to write another story. Point Vestal, Joel-An ...more

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Feb 10, 2015 Karl marked it as to-read

Shelves: 2015-02-books-bought

This copy is signed by the author.

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Aug 01, 2012 Mary rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I liked this book so much I have read it four times.Whimsical,mystical,metaphysical,suspend your believe in the linear world and enter this coastal town where time sifts,ghosts interact with the locals and houses move on whim,,,Truly delightful

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Nov 27, 2018 Fran Burdsall rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019

An epic battle of good versus evil. Complete with dancing cat, witches, Indians and china men in a coastal pacific town once populated by Victorians, the only thing this village was missing was a parsonage that moves, floats and relocates as it sees fit. Oh, yes, it has that too. I was so confused. I couldn't figure out why anything was happening.... I just accepted it on faith. ...more

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Jul 11, 2014 Melanti rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014, group-reads, historical, time-travel

Before you read my review, you should know that I have a somewhat adversarial relationship with funny books. A lot of books that other people find hilarious are just painful to me. I think a lot of other readers would find this book really funny, quirky and whimsical - but for me this just dragged on and on and I was counting the pages to the end.

There were a lot of things that bugged me about this book but many of them do tie back to this whimsicalness and since I think others would react diff Before you read my review, you should know that I have a somewhat adversarial relationship with funny books. A lot of books that other people find hilarious are just painful to me. I think a lot of other readers would find this book really funny, quirky and whimsical - but for me this just dragged on and on and I was counting the pages to the end.

There were a lot of things that bugged me about this book but many of them do tie back to this whimsicalness and since I think others would react differently to that than I do, I'll just ignore those points and focus on a couple of standouts.

First, this timeline is seriously, seriously non-linear. The town doesn't experience time in a linear fashion. The characters don't experience time in the same line as the town. You might drive down the street and pass through half a dozen decades. You might walk through a door and find yourself a century in the past. You might be a ghost and have to repeat yourself like clockwork once a day or once a week... And on top of that it's not narrated in a linear fashion either. It's narrated by a group of people who constantly interject events that won't happen for months or argue about the proper order in which to tell the story. And yes, that's part of the quirky/whimsical style that I've already admitted I don't like so others would probably find it funnier than I do but I found all those interjections rather tiresome. I think the plotline would have been easier to follow if there were a single character to follow through the timeline as he/she experienced it, but it's not just one character - it's an ensemble cast of dozens of characters. Granted, there's arguably just two main characters, but the book isn't told from their point of view - it's told from an ever-shifting viewpoint.

Second, I really didn't like the random insertion of child rape and holocaust imagery into the final scenes. Yes, he's describing a devil figure at that point so I guess it's sort of appropriate, but those are both trigger images for portions of the populace and (IMO) they need to be used with a LOT more care than they're used here.

Last, this is one of the most casually racist modern books I've come across in a LONG time. Perhaps racist is a bit too strong a word and I should use "non-pc" instead - but this was written in the '90's! Come on! All ethnic groups are treated en masse rather than individuals. The only exception is the Irish cop - and considering he resided in a BAR I don't think he should really count! To have "Indians" paddling war canoes around, carrying spears decorated with dangling scalps?! To portray Cubans as drug smugglers, Italians as part of the Mafia and Chinese as either illegal immigrants or human traffickers who might "shanghai" you?

So, granted, a LOT of the characters are extremely old. When you have a ghosts that died around the turn of the century, having them be completely politically correct and non-racist just wouldn't be logical. But a)nothing else in this book is logical, and b)there are ways to do that sort of thing while making clear that this isn't the author or narrator's viewpoint.

The whole book was just a complete turn-off for me and I'm going to actively avoid his books in the future.
...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Jeff Youngstrom added it · review of another edition

(March 3, 1997)
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About Jack Cady

Jack Cady

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Winner of Nebula, Phillip K. Dick, World Fantasy and Bram Stoker awards.

Obituaries:
in Seattle PI
in Peninsula Daily News
in Seattle Times
from Komo News ...more