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Book Review: Grey Skies by William Becker

Grey Skies by William Becker

Publisher: Self-published, June 2019 (pre-order)

ASIN: B07PHGQB8M

Available: Kindle edition

 

Grey Skies by William Becker is the author’s second novel. The main character’s first-person voice narrates the story, but his identity, the story’s location, time, and plot are revealed piecemeal over many chapters.

The narrator suffers through an excruciating series of horrific ordeals. He and the reader know that some parts are unreal. The question is, which parts are dreams or delusions, and which are real?

The narrator finds and buries a nun’s slashed, bloody body; wriggling balls of black spiders cling to doors and walls in his home; he’s trapped in a cramped sub-basement, and crawls and scrapes his way through a stinking underground tunnel to escape; he wades waist-deep through brown, feces-laden sewer water; a giant spider with a human head chases him through a burning house; a stuffed, sackcloth giant stalks him through a doomed cruise ship, listing and powerless in a monstrous storm; he’s drowning in black ocean waters; he finds himself under giant tree roots next to the nun’s rotting corpse.

Throughout these miseries there are mysteries. Who is our narrator? Does he have a family? Why is he being tortured? Who is torturing him? Readers will appreciate the author’s ingenuity in piling on gruesome events and tying them into the mysteries.

The author scattered several paragraphs of nonsense letter, numbers and symbols throughout the novel. These lines of literary graffiti detract from the story. He also appended two unrelated short stories. Recommended.

 

Contains: Gore and violence.

 

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

 

 

Posted on April 19, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Sourcebooks Landmark, 2018

ISBN-13: 978-1492657965

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, audio CD

 

Sebastian Bell wakes up in the rain in the woods, completely disoriented, and without any memories except the name Anna. He hears screaming nearby and is convinced he’s witnessed a murder. Stumbling to the nearest house, a deteriorating Gothic heap called Blackheath, owned by the wealthy Hardcastle family, he discovers he is a guest at a bizarre weekend party commemorating the nineteenth anniversary of the death of young Thomas Hardcastle and also celebrating the arrival home of his older sister, Evelyn. In a striking similarity to Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, the invited guests, all present the day Thomas Hardcastle died, are, for the most part unlikable, judgmental, selfish, and greedy, although a few have hidden, redeeming, characteristics. Some of them, or at least one of them, is a murderer. All of them are trapped at Blackheath. But that’s where the similarity ends.

In a reality-bending twist worthy of David Lynch, it turns out that everyone at the party is unwittingly repeating the same day over and over again. Sebastian (or is he Sebastian?), is told that he has eight opportunities to solve the murder and escape the cycle before he starts repeating the day again without memories and has to start the process over from scratch. In a surrealistic, time-traveling, body-hopping puzzle of a story with echoes of 1930s mystery novels, Gothic family secrets, and ominous suggestions about the future, Turton manages to say quite a lot about the human condition, the advantages and disadvantages of memory, the choices we make, and our ability to change, forgive, and redeem ourselves.

We see the story from our main character’s point of view. Since he’s disoriented, wounded, easily deceived, and has no idea what’s going on or who he actually is, it is completely bewildering and terrifying. It is work to keep track of the various threads of the plot as they twist and tangle with one another, but the story is compelling and worth the effort, and the payoff is fantastic.

I have already said too much and can’t say more without completely spoiling the plot. If you’re bored with straightforward mystery novels or enjoyed The Time Traveler’s Wife, and are ready to suspend disbelief, this is a perfect choice. Highly recommended.

Posted on January 8, 2019 by , Reply

Book Review: Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet

Sweet Lamb of Heaven by Lydia Millet
W.W. Norton and Company, 2016
ISBN-13: 978-0393285543
Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, and Audible audio

When Anna discovers she’s pregnant, her husband Ned wants nothing to do with her pregnancy and insists she have an abortion: when she chooses not to do so, he becomes hostile and absent in their relationship, spending all his time at work. In the hospital, in the first moments alone with her new baby, Anna has the first of many unexplainable auditory hallucinations. Having dismissed ear infections, neurological issues, mental illness, and demon possession, she learns from the Internet that at least she is not alone: there are others who also hear voices. Rather than getting drawn in, Anna decides to keep a diary of what she hears, and keep the voices to herself. After years of being alone with the voices and her little girl, Lena, she leaves Ned, and goes off the grid so he can’t find her and take back their daughter, Lena. Now Ned is running for office, though. Ironically, he needs his family back to promote his pro-life, family values agenda… and he’ll do anything he needs to, to make that happen.

This sounds like a fairly straightforward narrative, but it’s really not: while I started out wanting to believe Anna, she is an extremely unreliable narrator, and becomes more and more so as the book continues. Even she starts to doubt her perceptions, and it’s hard to tell whether this is because Ned is gaslighting her, or because she harbors paranoid delusions. Did she ever actually leave home? How long is Ned’s reach? Are her friends during her escape real people, and if they are, are they even sane? Are the voices evidence of God, or the absence of God, or something else? The only thing we know for sure is that she has a deep love for her daughter that transcends anything else that happens. And some very terrifying things do happen. If we trust Anna’s perception of what Ned is capable of at all, he is not just a narcissist, but a genuinely frightening force able to tamper with the brain, and, through that, our sense of reality.

Readers looking for a straightforward, fast-paced narrative won’t find that here. However, those who enjoy the puzzle of a compelling psychological thriller with a plot complicated by an unreliable narrator, or fragmented reality, with a taste of an apocalyptic future, will find a lot to chew on here. Recommended.

Reviewed by Kirsten Kowalewski

 


Posted on November 2, 2016 by , Reply
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