The Girl Next Door
By Jack Ketchum
As children, I’d be willing to bet that nearly every person commits one or more minor crimes. Whether you lift a candy bar from the supermarket on a dare, sneak a look at your Dad’s Playboy Magazines or write graffiti on a school wall, the act can make your heart race. There’s fear, but also a sense of exhilaration that you might get caught.
If you’re like me, after the exhilaration came the guilt, guilt that someone somewhere was hurt by your actions. When I got older and got into a few punch-ups, whether I was on the winning or losing side, I still felt guilty. This guilt could last for quite some time and leave me pretty depressed.
Whatever guilt I felt is nothing compared to what the main character of Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door feels. But then again, the crimes committed by David and the other kids in his neighborhood are way….way…way worse then anything I and 99.9 percent of children ever do.
Sure, they are goaded on by a woman slowly going insane but even the usually kind David, who knows what’s taking place is wrong, participates in the crimes. It’s freaking awful but oh, so well captured by the author. David’s guilt is palpable and unnerving and sits over the book like an anvil.
Guilt isn’t the only feeling Ketchum expertly captures in this novel. The tension is thick and sits heavy over the proceedings. It’s suffocating and as the violence ramps up it just gets worse and worse. Just when you can’t take it anymore the tension breaks, but…it breaks for a morbid scene of horror!
This novel is a runaway train, you can’t stop it and it will not stop for you. Ketchum’s writing is excellent this time around. He captures the mentality of children and the horror of insanity in gruesome reality. The “on screen” violence isn’t as gory and over the top as something like Ketchum’s Off Season, but that is what makes it so awful. It’s realistic and therefore horrifying and evil.
Read it!
(I assume every fan of horror literature knows this story but if not, here is a quick synopsis: girl goes to live with aunt after parents die, nutty aunt tortures girl and gets the neighborhood kids to join in. It’s based on a true story.)
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
Monday, October 26, 2009
MAKE LOVE
I finished Bruce Campbell’s “Make Love: the Bruce Campbell Way” a few days ago.
Unlike his other book “If Chins Could Kill, Confessions of a B-Movie Actor” this is a piece of fiction which sees a fictional Campbell cast as one of the main actors in a big money romantic comedy. The fictional movie, “Let’s Make Love,” is being directed by Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols and stars Richard Gere and Rene Zellwegger.
Campbell fears that he’s not prepared to work with such luminaries so he goes to extreme lengths to prepare for his role as a wise, Southern doorman.
Of course, everything that can go wrong does. Through his own ineptitude and bad luck something as simple as learning how to be a doorman, results in Campbell tackling former Secretary of State Colin Powell, starring in a pornographic movie, getting shot in an old fashioned pistol duel, playing catch with John Dillinger’s penis and so on.
It’s all rather wacky but it is enjoyable. Campbell is an average writer but more importantly, he’s slapstick funny and very personable. Reading the book is almost like sitting down for a beer with him and having him tell you about all the stuff that can go wrong on a B-movie. Who wouldn’t love that?
The horror factor is nil, but the Campbell factor is high which makes “Make Love” a quick enjoyable read.
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Love-Bruce-Campbell-Way/dp/0312312601
Unlike his other book “If Chins Could Kill, Confessions of a B-Movie Actor” this is a piece of fiction which sees a fictional Campbell cast as one of the main actors in a big money romantic comedy. The fictional movie, “Let’s Make Love,” is being directed by Oscar-winning director Mike Nichols and stars Richard Gere and Rene Zellwegger.
Campbell fears that he’s not prepared to work with such luminaries so he goes to extreme lengths to prepare for his role as a wise, Southern doorman.
Of course, everything that can go wrong does. Through his own ineptitude and bad luck something as simple as learning how to be a doorman, results in Campbell tackling former Secretary of State Colin Powell, starring in a pornographic movie, getting shot in an old fashioned pistol duel, playing catch with John Dillinger’s penis and so on.
It’s all rather wacky but it is enjoyable. Campbell is an average writer but more importantly, he’s slapstick funny and very personable. Reading the book is almost like sitting down for a beer with him and having him tell you about all the stuff that can go wrong on a B-movie. Who wouldn’t love that?
The horror factor is nil, but the Campbell factor is high which makes “Make Love” a quick enjoyable read.
http://www.amazon.com/Make-Love-Bruce-Campbell-Way/dp/0312312601
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
Reading the books of children
Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer – To say this little children’s book is action packed is an understatement. People, fairies, dwarves and trolls crash into one another like contestants in a backwoods county’s demolition derby. There are guns, military squads, bombs, martial arts and a dwarf that farts earth with such force he blows a guy through a wall…yeah, I know it doesn’t make any sense but that’s the only way I can explain it.
This is all fine and good and makes for an enjoyable read, but it would mean so much more if it was written around characters I didn’t hate. In short, all the characters are bastards and I pretty much hoped throughout that most would die horrible deaths. The book almost redeemed itself when a battle between a troll and a sword wielding human built like a tank left the human a broken bloody mess, but more importantly…dead. Of course the author had to go and screw it all up by having some fairy resurrect him or some such nonsense.
More bloody and violent than Harry Potter but not as engaging, this book makes for an enjoyably quick read but I’m not running out to get the rest of the series anytime soon…actually probably never.
Today's linky goodness: http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-utah17-2008aug17
Cry you bastards, cry!
This is all fine and good and makes for an enjoyable read, but it would mean so much more if it was written around characters I didn’t hate. In short, all the characters are bastards and I pretty much hoped throughout that most would die horrible deaths. The book almost redeemed itself when a battle between a troll and a sword wielding human built like a tank left the human a broken bloody mess, but more importantly…dead. Of course the author had to go and screw it all up by having some fairy resurrect him or some such nonsense.
More bloody and violent than Harry Potter but not as engaging, this book makes for an enjoyably quick read but I’m not running out to get the rest of the series anytime soon…actually probably never.
Today's linky goodness: http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-utah17-2008aug17
Cry you bastards, cry!
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Quick and so very dirty book review
Boys Will Be Boys: Breaking the Link Between Masculinity and Violence by Myriam Miedz – This book took me forever to get through. I was totally down for the first couple chapters concerning how boys are conditioned to be violent. It’s interesting and from what I understand pretty ground breaking work for when it was published.
Still, Miedz is very repetitive and covers the same topics in similar words several different times. This makes an otherwise interesting work drag, but it wasn’t this repetition that bothered me most.
Miedz is very adamant that making the changes to US society that would allow us to raise less violent boys must be mandated by government legislation. She continually states that the power of legislation trumps personal responsibility. I believe that she is only partly right. If, as she proposes, school districts are required to have classes thaT teach parenting and/or conflict resolution skills they’re essentially teaching personal responsibility. The two go hand-in-hand and are not mutually exclusive. By having legislation trump responsibility, she creates an unreal expectation that the government would actually work to ban certain types of television shows, toys and sports like she suggests. Anyone with an iota of common sense realizes that a government raised on the free market tit is going to have none of that. They might however agree to fund a conflict resolution class for high school freshmen.
Lastly, Miedz viciously attacks any sport that involves physical contact. She vilifies these sports while totally ignoring any of their positive aspects. Yes, she does lay some of the blame on coaches and a society that champions winning at any cost but instead of focusing on changing that mentality she again asks for legislation.
Her hatred for sports and her focus on legislation often undermine her whole argument because they’re totally unrealistic to our society. Members of our government would be laughed out of office if they suggested banning high school football or toy guns. Skip this and read Susan Faludi’s Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. It’s much more timely, better written and will allow you to come up with your own ideas on how we can raise less violent boys.
Still, Miedz is very repetitive and covers the same topics in similar words several different times. This makes an otherwise interesting work drag, but it wasn’t this repetition that bothered me most.
Miedz is very adamant that making the changes to US society that would allow us to raise less violent boys must be mandated by government legislation. She continually states that the power of legislation trumps personal responsibility. I believe that she is only partly right. If, as she proposes, school districts are required to have classes thaT teach parenting and/or conflict resolution skills they’re essentially teaching personal responsibility. The two go hand-in-hand and are not mutually exclusive. By having legislation trump responsibility, she creates an unreal expectation that the government would actually work to ban certain types of television shows, toys and sports like she suggests. Anyone with an iota of common sense realizes that a government raised on the free market tit is going to have none of that. They might however agree to fund a conflict resolution class for high school freshmen.
Lastly, Miedz viciously attacks any sport that involves physical contact. She vilifies these sports while totally ignoring any of their positive aspects. Yes, she does lay some of the blame on coaches and a society that champions winning at any cost but instead of focusing on changing that mentality she again asks for legislation.
Her hatred for sports and her focus on legislation often undermine her whole argument because they’re totally unrealistic to our society. Members of our government would be laughed out of office if they suggested banning high school football or toy guns. Skip this and read Susan Faludi’s Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man. It’s much more timely, better written and will allow you to come up with your own ideas on how we can raise less violent boys.
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