Well, the title here pretty much tells you what this one’s going to be about…the wee lad. Post a devastating blow out with the lovely Annie, the wee lad goes back to Scotland to the small and slightly odd small town of his childhood, in fact, right to his childhood abode and right into the arms of his darling and loving adopted parents with whom he inexplicably has intimacy issues.
And right into the loving arms of his childhood pals who’ve become stranger than ever. So the lad drinks and mopes and talks and on and on until Annie shows up determined to win him back and save their connection. A strongly character driven story, much like book seven before it, with a much narrower focus and nary a superhero in sight outside of Annie’s recollections of her origin story. The artists, once again, are changed up all too often, creating for a somewhat disjointed experience of the ever-changing same faces. But overall, a fun read. As the Boys comics tend to be.
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Satanic panic of the ‘80s was a real deal. A bizarre specifically 80s version of McCarthyism with the witch hunting taking a distinctly supernatural turn. Apparently, there’s something in people’s collective psyche that craves this sort of insane insidious conspiracy. There are certainly plenty of them now, albeit of a more distinctly political lean.
Back in the '80s, there was a famous trial that set off a chain of events that led a lot of people to believe that the teachers were abusing the kids and forcing them to perform in satanic rituals. An insane theory made popular by the likes of the mustachioed punditry of Geraldo Rivera. This book is a fictionalized account of the events told from the perspective of the young boy whose lies began the entire thing and an adult who can’t or won’t remember his past even as that past seems determined to hunt him down and make him pay for this forgetting. Took me a moment to get into, but once I did, the book proved difficult to put down. Very dynamic narrative, very engaging, it draws you right in the way a good spiraling into madness tends to. I’ve not read the author before, but this was a terrific introduction…the way the real story is made into fiction, the way the fiction veers into supernatural all the while maintaining its stranglehold on reality and its helpless protagonist. The way the past and the present are interwoven so cleverly. The character writing. The meditation on the impermanence and complexity of the memory mechanism and its role in the making of a person. All very good. I’d say the only two detractors for me… First, if you’re going to take it back in time, do it right. Don’t have your characters sing along to songs or watch tv that wouldn’t be around until years into the future. The 80s weren’t that long ago and also, there’s internet, it’s all too easy to look up. And yes, one might make an argument that these mistakes were deliberate to highlight the memory glitches, but they didn’t read that way in the context of the novel, they just read like mistakes. Second, the mystery aspect of it (and this is in many ways a mystery novel), I figured out way, way ahead of the reveal. Not sure if this was my inner detective genius showing off and if it was just made that obvious by the novel, but there it is. Not ideal. Would have liked the reveal to have been more of a surprise. Other than that, though, a really good read. I’d definitely read more by the author. Recommended. A man sits in a 6x9 cage awaiting an execution. A man has done terrible things; things the state has deemed it fair to take his life for, but how did he get there? What forces had to align to shape him into this person he’s become, this person whom society rejected so permanently?
This is an origin story. A story of the making of a sociopath and a serial killer. It is a complex and compelling story specifically because its protagonist is a reluctant monster – a monster who doesn’t want to be one, a monster who above all just wants to be a regular person. Alas, it wasn’t in his stars. Some people get off to a rough start and manage to make the best of it and some get overwhelmed by that rough start and forever shaped by it. This is a story of the latter, told through the eyes of the many women in his life, from the mother who abandoned him as a child to the sister-in-law who cautiously observed him from a distance to a foster care acquaintance who became a cop determined to stop him to the female jailer who he hopes will save him to the young woman who sees the best in him. In the end, the man becomes defined solely by women, from those who knew and even tried to love to those he killed. It’s a trajectory that almost seems inevitable, which makes it all the more tragic. It certainly makes for a powerhouse of a story. Emotionally complex, engaging, affecting, stark and very well written, this is a journey into the darkness fans of pitch-black psychological fiction are sure to enjoy. This is my second read by the author. Both books have been absolutely great. Recommended. |
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December 2023
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