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The Diviner
The party was in full swing.
The record player was blasting out the most popular songs of World War II.
The bar was crowded with men in old-fashioned U.S. Navy uniforms and their bobby-soxer dates.
Already many were bombed out of their minds with booze, and in a corner a couple was making love on the floor, with no one bothering to look twice.
Cass had told Mark that this was a masquerade when she brought him here. But now he realized for the first time since he had met the mysterious, irresistible creature, that the masquerade was over...
...and he was getting the first glimpse of the terrifying truth.
The record player was blasting out the most popular songs of World War II.
The bar was crowded with men in old-fashioned U.S. Navy uniforms and their bobby-soxer dates.
Already many were bombed out of their minds with booze, and in a corner a couple was making love on the floor, with no one bothering to look twice.
Cass had told Mark that this was a masquerade when she brought him here. But now he realized for the first time since he had met the mysterious, irresistible creature, that the masquerade was over...
...and he was getting the first glimpse of the terrifying truth.
312 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
41 people want to read
About the author
Marilyn Harris
41 books81 followersHarris was born on June 4, 1931, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the daughter of John P., an oil executive, and Dora (nee Veal) Harris. Harris was educated in her home state, attending Cottey College from 1945 to 1951, then transferring to the University of Oklahoma, from which she received a bachelor of arts degree in 1953 and a master of arts degree in 1955.
Harris's first collection of short stories, King's Ex, was published by Doubleday in 1967. After that Harris proved a prolific author, publishing seventeen books, including novels, short stories, romance/ historical fiction and children's fiction in a twenty-year period from 1970 to 1989. These works, in addition to those listed above, include In the Midst of Earth (1969), The Peppersalt Land (1970), The Runaway's Diary (1971), The Conjurers (1974), Bledding Sorrow (1976), The Portent (1980), The Last Great Love (1981), Warrick (1985), Night Games (1987), and Lost and Found (1991). Harris's work has received a wide readership; in 1983, nine million of her books were in print, and her work has been translated into many languages, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Japanese. She has also been an author in residence at Oklahoma's Central State University.
She died January 18, 2002.
Harris's first collection of short stories, King's Ex, was published by Doubleday in 1967. After that Harris proved a prolific author, publishing seventeen books, including novels, short stories, romance/ historical fiction and children's fiction in a twenty-year period from 1970 to 1989. These works, in addition to those listed above, include In the Midst of Earth (1969), The Peppersalt Land (1970), The Runaway's Diary (1971), The Conjurers (1974), Bledding Sorrow (1976), The Portent (1980), The Last Great Love (1981), Warrick (1985), Night Games (1987), and Lost and Found (1991). Harris's work has received a wide readership; in 1983, nine million of her books were in print, and her work has been translated into many languages, including French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Polish, and Japanese. She has also been an author in residence at Oklahoma's Central State University.
She died January 18, 2002.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 11, 2012
Marilyn Harris, The Diviner (Jove, 1982)
It should be a rule, and in fact, I'm making it one right now: the second time you have to stop and ask yourself why you're still reading this piece of claptrap, stop reading it. That would have probably saved me a month of spare free time being taken up by this travesty of a “horror” novel, about which I am going to entirely ignore the rules of space-time and claim that it is Harris' exploration of Tracey Walters' famous, and hilarious, “lattice of coincidence” speech from the 1983 film Repo Man. Because I can't conceive of any other way this book makes even the slightest semblance of sense.
There is a plot, though figuring out what it is before the final hundred pages is the kind of thing you should probably leave to those who drink a great deal more than you: there was a World War II-era love triangle just before Pearl Harbor. After one climactic night, one of the wives would have disappeared. By the end of the war, both husbands would be dead, one under mysterious circumstances (he was shipped out after being assured that would never happen; he was the base chaplain), and the sole survivor of the foursome had fled to California with her infant son. Fast-forward to 1963. Said infant son, Mark Simpson, is now a college freshman going to school on a full track and field ride at a midwest school that just happens(!) to be in the same town as the now-long-abandoned base where all this took place almost two decades before. The track team uses the base for overland running practice, but when Mark heads out there for his first run, the sense of weird hops off the charts, leading to a sense of distraction so great he ends up stumbling into a lake and hitting his head, after which he's resuscitated by his coach with the encouragement—though not the help—of hot townie Cass Manning, who seems to find Mark as intriguing as he finds her. But the farther along their relationship goes, the weirder things get...
It should be noted that Ms. Harris is generally much better-known (by those who remember her work at all these days, natch) as a romance writer, a genre in which she was a great deal more prolific. Keeping this in mind might well be a good idea if you attempt The Diviner; a lot of the plot devices and tropes romance readers not only take in stride, but positively expect (or, at least, did in the seventies), are going to chafe on the horror genre fan. For example, the rash of odd coincidences that hold the book's plot together could easily be found in, say, any book written during the seventies or eighties by anyone with the surname Goudge. But try to get away with this in a horror novel and, well, you end up with The Diviner (which also, natch, has a strong romance subplot, though it's obvious Ms. Harris tried to send it to the background—with very little success).
Simply put: if you've already got this on your shelf, as I did, give it fifty pages before deciding whether you want to keep reading or toss it. But there's absolutely no reason to go hunting up a copy. **
It should be a rule, and in fact, I'm making it one right now: the second time you have to stop and ask yourself why you're still reading this piece of claptrap, stop reading it. That would have probably saved me a month of spare free time being taken up by this travesty of a “horror” novel, about which I am going to entirely ignore the rules of space-time and claim that it is Harris' exploration of Tracey Walters' famous, and hilarious, “lattice of coincidence” speech from the 1983 film Repo Man. Because I can't conceive of any other way this book makes even the slightest semblance of sense.
There is a plot, though figuring out what it is before the final hundred pages is the kind of thing you should probably leave to those who drink a great deal more than you: there was a World War II-era love triangle just before Pearl Harbor. After one climactic night, one of the wives would have disappeared. By the end of the war, both husbands would be dead, one under mysterious circumstances (he was shipped out after being assured that would never happen; he was the base chaplain), and the sole survivor of the foursome had fled to California with her infant son. Fast-forward to 1963. Said infant son, Mark Simpson, is now a college freshman going to school on a full track and field ride at a midwest school that just happens(!) to be in the same town as the now-long-abandoned base where all this took place almost two decades before. The track team uses the base for overland running practice, but when Mark heads out there for his first run, the sense of weird hops off the charts, leading to a sense of distraction so great he ends up stumbling into a lake and hitting his head, after which he's resuscitated by his coach with the encouragement—though not the help—of hot townie Cass Manning, who seems to find Mark as intriguing as he finds her. But the farther along their relationship goes, the weirder things get...
It should be noted that Ms. Harris is generally much better-known (by those who remember her work at all these days, natch) as a romance writer, a genre in which she was a great deal more prolific. Keeping this in mind might well be a good idea if you attempt The Diviner; a lot of the plot devices and tropes romance readers not only take in stride, but positively expect (or, at least, did in the seventies), are going to chafe on the horror genre fan. For example, the rash of odd coincidences that hold the book's plot together could easily be found in, say, any book written during the seventies or eighties by anyone with the surname Goudge. But try to get away with this in a horror novel and, well, you end up with The Diviner (which also, natch, has a strong romance subplot, though it's obvious Ms. Harris tried to send it to the background—with very little success).
Simply put: if you've already got this on your shelf, as I did, give it fifty pages before deciding whether you want to keep reading or toss it. But there's absolutely no reason to go hunting up a copy. **
July 5, 2024
DNF. This book was written by a crazy person featuring characters that don’t behave like any human beings who ever existed. I don’t know if that sentence makes sense but neither do hers. Great cover, wasted.
May 4, 2018
DNF, pg 120-something.
It pains me to 1-star a Harris novel, but nope. This was just plain BAD. Muddled, murky, confusing, & nonsensical, with a dumb supernatural source. I've never been a fan of the 'goofy, loopy prose to illustrate mental imbalance' style, though there are authors who can pull it off (Shirley Jackson comes to mind). But as I've gotten older, I find myself showing less & less tolerance for that trope. No matter how bizarre the story, I need a majority of words that aren't written at odd metaphorical angles & muffled under layers of obscurity.
The one good thing I'll say: her descriptions of the abandoned base are creepy. But a vivid physical backdrop is one of MH's strengths, so I'd expect nothing else, even at her worst.
Unlike most of Harris' oeuvre, this book is better off OOP & forgotten.
It pains me to 1-star a Harris novel, but nope. This was just plain BAD. Muddled, murky, confusing, & nonsensical, with a dumb supernatural source. I've never been a fan of the 'goofy, loopy prose to illustrate mental imbalance' style, though there are authors who can pull it off (Shirley Jackson comes to mind). But as I've gotten older, I find myself showing less & less tolerance for that trope. No matter how bizarre the story, I need a majority of words that aren't written at odd metaphorical angles & muffled under layers of obscurity.
The one good thing I'll say: her descriptions of the abandoned base are creepy. But a vivid physical backdrop is one of MH's strengths, so I'd expect nothing else, even at her worst.
Unlike most of Harris' oeuvre, this book is better off OOP & forgotten.
May 31, 2019
Young lovers meet at an abandoned naval base haunted by a vengeful spirit in this unusual story of tensions between burgeoning baby boomers and their "greatest generation" parents. Perhaps for kids in the "me" generation, the make-do, civic duty values of their parents felt a lot like communism with stifling codes of conduct and preordained destinies. At least that's how I read this wacky but very interesting and entertaining novel. It's a brisk easy read that kept me guessing about what was going on right up to the amusingly ridiculous ending.
Most will probably find the overload of outrageous explanations at the conclusion too hard to swallow, but I thought it fit right in with the rest of the book. The author displays an inventive approach to storytelling that involves a lot of repetition. This occasionally is annoying- there are too many visits to the naval base, too many long pursuits, and the word "vacuum" gets exhausted- but overall, I found it rewarding. For example Mark follows in his mother's footsteps at the old officers' club, and then later, in a fantastic scene at a California bar, his mother experiences a haunting echo of his journey. There's a wonderfully weird sex scene ("He thought for an instant he saw the skeleton structure of the neck, the smooth ivory flesh fallen away, only the bleached white bones of vertebrae visible"), several spooky and thrilling moments, and engaging themes of image vs. substance. But this book won me over right at the beginning, when a predatory bartender ogles a mysterious beauty at a Navy party. "Something like that don't belong to one cock," he leers, reducing the woman to an appropriated object. Moments later he follows her outside and is promptly pursued and then skinned alive by a huge predatory bird, the beginning of a long, vicious lesson in appropriation. These bird attacks are really well-done and scary, just one more thing to love in this odd but surprising book.
Most will probably find the overload of outrageous explanations at the conclusion too hard to swallow, but I thought it fit right in with the rest of the book. The author displays an inventive approach to storytelling that involves a lot of repetition. This occasionally is annoying- there are too many visits to the naval base, too many long pursuits, and the word "vacuum" gets exhausted- but overall, I found it rewarding. For example Mark follows in his mother's footsteps at the old officers' club, and then later, in a fantastic scene at a California bar, his mother experiences a haunting echo of his journey. There's a wonderfully weird sex scene ("He thought for an instant he saw the skeleton structure of the neck, the smooth ivory flesh fallen away, only the bleached white bones of vertebrae visible"), several spooky and thrilling moments, and engaging themes of image vs. substance. But this book won me over right at the beginning, when a predatory bartender ogles a mysterious beauty at a Navy party. "Something like that don't belong to one cock," he leers, reducing the woman to an appropriated object. Moments later he follows her outside and is promptly pursued and then skinned alive by a huge predatory bird, the beginning of a long, vicious lesson in appropriation. These bird attacks are really well-done and scary, just one more thing to love in this odd but surprising book.
May 20, 2023
It took every fiber of my being to finish this book. Like the main character, Mark Simpson, I had no idea what was going on and was simply trying to push through.
The beginning of the book is definitely intriguing, as is the ending. Everything in between, however, is bland. The word 'vacuum' is so overused throughout the novel that every time I came across it, I wanted to vomit.
The beginning of the book is definitely intriguing, as is the ending. Everything in between, however, is bland. The word 'vacuum' is so overused throughout the novel that every time I came across it, I wanted to vomit.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews