Status Updates From The House Across the Way

Well, this was disappointing. I think I was expecting something more like Raymond E. Feist's "Faerie Tale" or John Crowley's "Little, Big" and less like a bargain basement Stephen King. More fey and looming dread, less sex and gore. Also, I always forget that horror seemed to rely on adultery as a plot point back in the latter half of the 20th century...

Geez. I knew this was Brian McNaughton, but I think I was expecting more...John Crowley's "Little, Big" and less Steven King's "It." I mean, Robert McCammon wrote straight historical fiction in addition to his horror works, so I figured McNaughton might be trying his hand at something more whimsical. But that first chapter disabused me of that illusion pretty quickly.

Such an exceptional horror novel. And the prose--oh, the prose!

"His memory flashed a card he hadn't known it held."

"Her long-stilled heartbeat returned, galloping, and pain returned with an intensity never even imagined before to each seperate cell of her body as she struggled to breathe air that was thick as damp wool. Lashing and wtwisting in darkness, she found herself confined by unyielding walls of cold satin that were locked, she instinctively knew, in a six-foot embrace of dirt and rock."

An excellent, hidden gem of the horror genre.

(One of the characters describes her mother-in-law)
For seven miles east and seven miles west,
And seven miles north and south,
Nae blade of corn or grass will grow
For the venom of her mouth