I have now read five Jennifer McMahon novels, all of which start to blend together since she basically uses the same formula over and over (The Night Sister definitely stands out from the pack, though, if you’re looking for a recommendation). Usually, something happens 10-15 years ago, to a kid or a group of kids. Then we’re in present day, with one or two grown ups trying to put the pieces of that summer/winter/night back together. There’s some sort of supernatural element that gets (at least mostly) […]
Run from the Potato Girl!
I’ve read two other books by Jennifer McMahon — The Night Sister and The Winter People. Promise Not to Tell did not quite match up to the excellent creepiness of those two later novels, but as a debut, it was still pretty good. “The dead can blame.” Now in her 40s, Kate Cypher (really? Cypher?) has returned to the small town/hippie commune where she grew up to deal with her mother, who suffers greatly from Alzheimer’s and recently burnt down the teepee (hippies) where she had been living. […]
Room 29
I read my first Jennifer McMahon book (The Winter People) on my last trip, so how nice that The Night Sister came available at the library just before this one. Like The Winter People, The Night Sister expertly combines creepy surroundings with unhappy people in unhappy towns, creating an incredible environment for horror. “For some people, Rose, it’s easier to pretend the things that frighten us most don’t exist at all.” In the 1950s, the Tower Hotel (named for the huge tower the founder built in the back) […]
Not Laura Lippman
A lot of my initial disappointment with this book was because I was reading under the assumption that McMahon was Laura Lippman, a murder mystery author I adore, and thought Lippman had taken temporary leave of her senses when she wrote this. Only she didn’t write it and I think this was McMahon’s first novel, so it’s a bit unfair that I was holding it to such a high bar, but there it is. McMahon can’t decide if she’s writing a ghost story or a […]
Pro Tip: Avoid Places Called “The Devil’s Hand”
Well, to go from the warm sweetness of the Waverly family in Bascom, NC to the weird and fucked up world of West Hall, Vermont was quite a shock. But The Winter People was probably one of the best horror stories that I’ve read in a while, and I pretty much devoured it in an afternoon. The cover compares it to the world of Stephen King, but to me, it had much more of a Tana French/Sophie Hannah kind of feel — you don’t know who to […]
To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart
In college, four artists named Tess, Henry, Suz, and Winnie began calling themselves the Compassionate Dismantlers whose motto was: “To understand the nature of a thing, it must be taken apart.” Moving to a reclusive lakeside cabin after graduation, they carry out elaborate pranks and escalating acts of vandalism with the intent to take things apart to reveal the underlying truth. The Dismantler schtick often comes off as pretentious and arrogant, but you don’t have to agree with them or even like them, you’re just […]