This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photography, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it's across Massachusetts or across the country. Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing--and terrifying--playground of amusements he calls "Christmasland." Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble--and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx's unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He's on the road again and he's picked up a new passenger: Vic's own son.… (more)
BookshelfMonstrosity: Malevolent entities that prey upon children are the driving force of these creepy, suspenseful horror stories. In both novels, only adults lucky enough to escape the villain's clutches in childhood are later able to battle the evil when it returns.… (more)
tootstorm: Well: Time-traveling serial killer powered by unexplained forces. You'll see the comparison in many reviews. Shining Girls gets a more mixed reaction, and is unconventional in its structure and uncomfortable violence, but is worth looking into for fans. (The audiobook is fantastic, with a full cast of readers for every character.)… (more)
Super spannend, gruselig, übersinnlich, und wirklich gut geschrieben! Er hat von einem der besten gelernt, das merkt man deutlich. Der Schreibstil ist wirklich toll, ich mochte auch die Überleitung zum nächsten Kapitel sehr. Ich hasse offene Enden, aber auch hier folgt Joe Hill dem Stil seines Vaters. Das war richtig gut!!! ( )
Fantastic book! I had high hopes when I started reading it and it did not disappoint. The character development is very similar to his fathers work and there’s a lot of references to Stephen kings characters but at the same time the story was so uniquely Joe Hill. At times I loved and hated the main character and at times I loved and hated the villain. He did a great job making you fall in love and get invested in all the characters and the chapters flowed very smoothly. He did transition from one chapter to the next quite uniquely a couple of times as you will see when you read the book. In the personal bonus for me was that the chapter to her for the most part reasonably short. I’m one of those where I don’t mind reading 100 to 200 chapters but I really prefer them to be short chapters; this was quite like that. Overall great unique story and I’m very glad I invested my time in reading this. ( )
I had to set this book down and I find myself having no desire to pick it up again at all. I really tried with this one but it’s like trying to listen to Marilyn Manson when you really wanted Pink Floyd. The writing style is just not to my liking at all. I read Heart Shaped Box years ago and thought of heavy metal during its read, but it had more depth than this novel. There’s a lot of empty room in the chapters with no real purpose and the only person worth any recognition is the stuttering librarian. ( )
Kept me interested the whole way through, but ultimately I felt that after spending so much time providing so much detail about these characters' backstory, the ending felt a little rushed, and I guess I was expecting a bigger payoff or twist along the way than what I got.. ( )
Die Todten reiten schnell. (For the dead travel fast.) -- "Lenore," Gottfried Bürger
Dedication
To my mom - here's a mean machine for the story queen.
First words
Nurse Thornton dropped into the long-term-care ward a little before eight with a hot bag of blood for Charlie Manx.
Quotations
What's good stays good no matter how much of a beating it takes.
She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.
But everyone also lives in the world inside their own head. An inscape, a world of thought. In a world made of thought--in an inscape--every idea is a fact. Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history.
Christmas was almost three months in the rearview mirror, and there was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running.
She thought of mothering, which was really another word for being present and caring what happened to someone.
She'd thought love had something to do with happiness, but it turned out they were not even vaguely related. Love was closer to a need, no different from the need to eat, to breathe.
You had to know when it made sense to try to untangle something and when to just cut the motherfucker loose.
Was there any human urge more pitiful--or more intense--than wanting another chance at something?
Everyone you lost was still there with you, and so maybe no one was ever lost at all.
It was a bridge spanning the distance between lost and found, a bridge over what was possible.
The difference between childhood and adulthood, Vic had come to believe, was the difference between imagination and resignation. You traded one for the other and lost your way.
Men, she thought, were one of the world's few sure comforts, like a fire on a cold October night, like cocoa, like broken-in slippers. Their clumsy affections, their bristly faces, and their willingness to do what needed to be done--cook an omelet, change lightbulbs, make with hugging--sometimes almost made being a woman fun.
It sounded like delusion until you remembered that people made the imaginary real all the time: taking the music they heard in their head and recording it, seeing a house in their imagination and building it. Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on.
Last words
Fall was here, winter coming right behind it, but for now there was still a little good riding weather left.
Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photography, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it's across Massachusetts or across the country. Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing--and terrifying--playground of amusements he calls "Christmasland." Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble--and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx's unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He's on the road again and he's picked up a new passenger: Vic's own son.
▾Library descriptions
No library descriptions found.
▾LibraryThing members' description
Book description
AR Level 5.7; 31 Points
Haiku summary
NOS4A2 is the perfect antidote for Christmas craziness (SENSpence)
LibraryThing Author
Joe Hill is a LibraryThing Author, an author who lists their personal library on LibraryThing.
)
)
)
Google Books — Loading...
Wikipedia in English (1)
1
Ich hasse offene Enden, aber auch hier folgt Joe Hill dem Stil seines Vaters.
Das war richtig gut!!! (