August 2013 - NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

[clong]

so get reading

[MidasKnight]

It will be my next. Gotta finish GoT #3 first.

[ChoChiyo]

Is GoT3 Game of Thrones?

I've read all of them that are out. The last two have been hugely disappointing to me. I've seen the first season's videos. I own the second season but haven't had time to watch it yet.

[MidasKnight]

Yes, GoT = Game of Thrones

I am reading #3 while watching season 2. Season 2 has some book 3 stuff in it so I had to hurry up and read to stay ahead. I'm gonna read #4 before season 3 comes out on video.

[clong]

I enjoyed the first two books, thought the third book was fantastic, and then found book 4 to be a letdown. I haven't yet picked up book 5 (the long long long waits for the past two books have sapped much of my enthusiasm for the series). I am happy to see the TV series get such a great response, although I haven't seen it (I hardly watch any tv ).

[ChoChiyo]

The TV series is pretty good--but they aretaking some liberties with the "facts" as they come from the book that are going to bite them in the ass down the road.

I really liked the first three books as well. I tore through all three of them in a week. Then, I started slogging through the others. The author needs to get his proverbial poop in a pile. He's got far too many plot threads hanging out everywhere and he keeps adding more and more and more characters to an already ENORMOUS character base. It's like he's lost control of his universe and it is spinning madly out of control.

It's a shame because I really got into the earlier books.

[MidasKnight]

Crap, this is a new book (released in April 2013) and only available in hardcover ...

My motivation has considerably dimmed.

Well, I voted for it ... I guess I have to spend the coin...

[ChoChiyo]

I'm getting it on my NOOK. I got the sample and read it; the style and content reminds me a LOT of Stephen King. Is this another of his "incarnations" with a psuedonym?

I love my NOOK, but I have found a lot of irritating glitches in the books. For example, in one of the game of thrones books, there were several pages just missing on the Nook. Very irritating indeed.

[clong]

Joe Hill is Stephen King's son.

I got a copy from the library.

[ChoChiyo]

Well, I'll be darned. Not Stephen King but in possession of Stephen King's DNA. LOL. At least I feel somewhat clever for having picked out a connection.

[MidasKnight]

Just bought it on my Nook which I really didn't want to do but ... unemployed so I need to be more frugal.

I'll buy plenty of paper in the near future to be sure!!

[clong]

Finished! I'll have to write up some notes so I can remember what I thought a month from now.

[ChoChiyo]

I finished it this afternoon. I have mixed feelings about it. I also have to take some notes and perhaps go back and reread a couple of sections.

[MidasKnight]

Holy crap.

I can never read more than a couple of chapters a day (at most).

[clong]

So what did everyone think?

[MidasKnight]

Was hoping someone else would go first.

I give this book a 5 overall. Maybe 6. I didn't resent reading it, but I thought it was rather juvenile. I have not read any Stephen King so if this is anything like his stuff, I'm not missing out on much.

That being said, it wasn't awful. I didn't think it was terribly clever yet it did seem fairly original (is that possible?). I can't quite put my finger on it but my general summation is that it was fairly average. I didn't really identify with any of the characters (which is probably why I wasn't drawn in so much). Manx was demented and actually loved kids? I guess I can buy that but what's with the hooked teeth?

Someone else please step in. I'm better at adding input than providing the baseline.

[clong]

I gave it a 6 out of 10. I thought the first half was pretty weak but the second half was pretty engaging, until we actually got to Christmasland, which I thought was just silly. I thought the book offered sufficient ideas to delivery a compelling story but the execution never quite lived up to the potential. I couldn't stop laughing when the car kidnapped the guy who had restored it, and I don't think that was the reaction Hill was going for. I never felt much empathy for the protagonist.

I am on the road on a family vacation, and will post more once I have a chance to go back and review the notes I wrote up when I finished the book.

[clong]

Here are a few more comments that I had noted right after finishing the book:

I found the denouement surprisingly effective, except for the unconvincing Lou/Tabitha romance angle.

Much of this book, and most especially the concluding Christmasland scene, felt to me as if it were written so that it would work in a movie. The final scene should have been more about deranged psychology and less about blowing stuff up.

Much of the stuff that was supposed to be scary just felt contrived to me (e.g., the already mentioned car kidnapping scene, the librarian's last scene).

To be fair, this genre is not exactly my cup of tea.

Anyone else going to chime in? Chochiyo? Algot?

[ChoChiyo]

Life has been so busy--and I have also read about fifteen other books since reading NOS4A2, but I'll give it the old college try.

I found the book derivative and a bit boring, to tell the truth.

It was as if Joe Hill took a ton of "stuff" from various books of his fathers, put them in a bag, shook them vigorously, and spilled them willy-nilly into his own book.

The whole concept of a guy who truly LOVED children, yet turned them into murderous, cannibalistic, deformed, soulless monsters and turned them loose in a horrific "Christmasland" theme park just didn't compute for me. A fictional world can be any sort of amazing and unlikely place, but it has to have an internal logic that makes sense. This just didn't make sense. Also, he reminded me of the character of a vampire in one of Stephen King's short stories which I read years ago--this vampire had taken his grandson to the mall where he was abducted by a pedophile. The pedophile's journey by car with the kidnapped vampire child reminded me a lot of the car trip with the abducted child in this book.

"The Brat" was like a clone of Beverly, the girl character in IT, with the addition of the ability to find the way to what she was looking for of a middle aged female character in another King story--everywhere I looked in this book, I found "recycled" characters, situations, or premises. Even the kid's murdered dog was a variation of CUJO. The too-big-for-her magical bike was also a recycled prop from a King book--I think it came from the book IT as well.

The girl who was able to get information from the scrabble tiles, but only if she "used up" her health to do so is a reconfiguration of the father in Firestarter.


The crazy henchman that murdered his father and raped(?) his mommy (it seemed to me that was implied) was a kissin' cousin to the Trashcan Man in The Stand.

"The Brat''s" mother was the vague, helpless, useless image of several of the mothers of children in Stephen King novels. She especially reminded me of "Eddie's" mom in IT.

The book fails most miserably in that it incorporates JUST TOO MUCH stuff from too many of his father's already told tales. Young Joe needs to get more original.

[Algot Runeman]

I read NOS4A2 a while back, but I am glad I let the book percolate before writing for the book club. I also forgot it was for August until today.

I am not generally a fan of fantasy. Too many times I just don't want to do the necessary work to suspend my beliefs that much. I usually feel that the story tramples along, leaving too much damaged reality in its path.

However, NOS4A2 (or NOS4R2 as the book seems to be titled in the UK) did something for me.

The overall story was basically creepy. At the same time it was a little "silly" like a lot of fantasy. Along the way, though Joe Hill did a neat thing. He connected some dots.

Vicky "Brat" was mostly ordinary. But she saw and did things a child should not. She grew up and became bizarre instead of being ordinary. In the meantime, she relegated her childhood experiences to imagination (like imaginary friends). She tried to isolate those impossible things.

The margins separating reality, fantasy, imagination, substance abuse and sanity were the territory of this novel. Even though the story was tough to swallow, the writing techniques which exposed the blurry nature of the boundaries made me appreciate the book. I don't think I was asked to simply believe the story, but to see how such things might invade my own ordinary life.

How do children imagine they are flying a jet while riding a bike? Is that imagination silly or a bad thing in any way? What keeps it from going too far?

Was the brat crazy when she was a child? Was she crazy as an adolescent, an adult? What makes imagination turn into insanity?

Was everybody else sane? Did her boyfriend see her as crazy? What made him able to love her so completely?

Are we entirely sane when we buy into a fantasy story? When we cannot, are we saying, "This isn't worth reading--too crazy." Is this the way that we mark the boundaries of our own imagination/sanity?

How much is the ability to imagine the workings of bizarre imagination a prerequisite for creativity? How many authors/artists/musicians have been described as "a little off" or worse?

This book made me think about these questions (for which I am not sure I have answers). I do recommend this book, but not for everyone.

Does this mean I will like the next fantasy novel I read?
I am not at all sure of the answer to that.

[MidasKnight]

Interesting post.

I never thought of this book as a fantasy. I suppose it is. Somehow I think "horror" implies supernatural rules can apply without it being a 'fantasy.'

Semantics most likely.

I never bought into the story and characters enough to ask those questions, though I agree your questions are excellent.

One thing I like about fantasy (and maybe you sorta touch upon this in your post) is that the genre actually SIMPLIFIES the questions by allowing reality to be different enough to make the questions reasonable, whereas in our own reality, nothing is simple and you lose the question in the noise.

What's our next book? I just bought 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (on a whim, sorta) so I'd like to add that to our list if I can.

[Algot Runeman]

One thing I like about fantasy (and maybe you sorta touch upon this in your post) is that the genre actually SIMPLIFIES the questions by allowing reality to be different enough to make the questions reasonable, whereas in our own reality, nothing is simple and you lose the question in the noise.

I think you have exactly pegged the point I was trying to make, MidasKnight. Joe Hill's story examined some possible connections between the "simplicity" of typical horror/fantasy novels and complex real life. As I read along, I wondered what it would be like to have an experience like Victoria's which made me question reality or my sanity. I never have had that kind of experience.

But maybe I read, in part, to stimulate my mind to explore the boundaries of my reality (in a "safe" way). There's a guy who lives nearby who daily walks miles and miles around town in a hoodie sweatshirt almost all year round. My wife thinks he is schizophrenic. He occasionally stalls in the middle of the street, swaying and running his fingers through his shoulder-length hair with his head tilted back. What "realities" are going on in his mind? I wonder if he is living a story like NOS4A2. I suspect I prefer reading, fantasy or otherwise, to the thought of living his day-to-day reality.

[clong]

Interesing points. I think it is true that fantasy in a way lets an author off the hook, but looking back at my favorite fantasy novels it seems that every one of them is set in a complex alternate reality that has its own detailed history and internally consistent rules. Figuring out what these rules are and how people live within them is what makes these stories work for me.

What's our next book? I just bought 2312 by Kim Stanley Robinson (on a whim, sorta) so I'd like to add that to our list if I can.

That sounds fine with me. I don't think we have yet read anything in as hard of an SF vein as I assume this would be.

[Algot Runeman]

I've just started 2312 after MidasKnight's suggestion and will be very happy to have it be the next book. Loved Robinson's trilogy which began with Forty Signs of Rain. If this is anywhere near that level, I'll love this choice for the book club.

Have we overpowered the nomination cycle with these three recent posts?