A Dark Matter

A group of high school kids get influenced by a shaman who performs a ceremony which opens a window to another world. That evening a guy in the group dies and one goes insane. A few years later when the husband of one of the victims who also happens to be a writer investigated each comes up with his own version of the occurrences of that day.

For a tale of horror it is quite Luke warm. ( )

The concept of this book had me sucked in from the beginning- a tight-knit group of childhood friends meets a charismatic cult-like leader who convices them to help him open a portal to another world... could be good!

Unfortunately by the second half of the book I started getting the impression that Straub wasn't going to flesh out the characters, explore their relationships, or delve into the nature and significance of the "dark matter" as much I felt he could have. The end result was a confusing series of events culminating in a rather weak conclusion.

This book was ok, but it could have been much better. ( )

I usually enjoy a good Peter Straub novel, and this one carried me along, but somehow didn't quite make it, not his best book for sure. ( )

Straub is an author whose works I'm never quite sure how I'll react to. Three of his works (Julia, If You Could See Me Now, and Shadowland) I like quite a bit. A couple more (Ghost Story and The Hellfire Club) I like parts of quite a bit. The rest just leave me cold.

Based on the premise I ought to like this one: Back in the late sixties a sort of itinerant mystic named Spencer Mallon wanders from place to place impressing the easily impressed with his line of mystic talk, and mooching off his followers. He comes to Madison, Wisconsin, and recruits a group of students to perform some sort of mystic ceremony out in a University-owned field. Something goes spectacularly wrong: One kid is messily dead, another missing, a third in a mental institution, the rest emotionally or physically damaged by the events. This book follows the 40-years-belated investigation of the incident by (Straub stand-in character) Lee Harwell, the only person from that old group of friends and acquaintances not to participate in the ceremony.

It's a great premise, huh? You can play around a bit at the intersections of imagination and reality, of magic and madness. You can tap Castenada for the feeling of the sorcery, then soak it in the sixties like King's "Hearts in Atlantis". Ice the cake with the ache that someone who remembers the sixties feels for their lost youth, the regrets of the wrong choices that they don't let themselves think about. The mistakes, the missed opportunities...

Sadly, I don't think Straub pulls it off. Thing is, Straub's just good enough of an author that I can't pinpoint which direction his mistakes are in. So, what do I mean by that? Well, let me give the worst example first: I don't think it's possible to love this book unless you like Lee Harwell and his wife. But I don't honestly know if Straub's error was in realizing you might not like them, but thinking it didn't matter (much in the way I dislike Colquitt Kennedy in Anne Siddon's The House Next Door, or the way that almost no one in Rashomon is remotely likable) or if the fault lies in the much more grievous error of not seeing that they're hard to sympathize with, much less love or admire.

All of his failings are like that: I don't think his group ever coheres as a group. Does he intend that and the book's just not strong enough to survive his choice, or did he just fail in painting them? He spends far too much time on heavily visual descriptions of others' mystic visions. Is he deliberately trying to distance the reader while making a show of being open and straightforward, or is he simply screwing up?

In the end, though, I don't know that it matters. He and I just didn't connect through his writing. He has some nice flashes here and there in the book, but overall, I think it's a weak thumbs down. Straub has a reputation in the genre, of course, and as a much younger reader, I'd have felt as if I was at fault because I just couldn't properly tune in. Older now, I can see how people might enjoy this book, but I didn't like it all that much myself. ( )

I was introduced to Straub through his work with King on the Talisman and Dark House books. Given their tie to the Dark Tower books, his ability to write about two overlapping worlds (and more) became obvious. In A Dark Matter he's right back in this element, describing an overlapping world beyond ours with disturbing clarity.

He does take a long time to get to the point of this story, but there is some gifted writing to enjoy en route. He uses multiple viewpoints to continually shed new light on the mystery at the core of the story. The character who spoke primarily in quotations from other literature was entertaining as well.

The highlight of this book occurs (not unsurprisingly) near the end as the narrative approaches its climax. Straub has a gift for using adjectives you wouldn't expect to make surreal scenes absolutely vivid in your imagination.

A Dark Matter isn't an instant-payoff novel—it's like an album you grow to love the longer you listen to it. ( )