Jeffrey Konvitz

One of my favorite horror films is The Sentinel and the book though flawed was also an enjoyable read for me. The Guardian, the sequel falls short of the first book in a number of ways.

A well written horror novel jumps into the plot either by setting the creepy tone or with some actual horrific event. The Guardian instead has a lengthy prologue spanning about fifteen years with characters whose relationship to the remainder of the novel doesn't become obvious until the book is almost over. show more This sort of exposition works best cinematically and perhaps coming off the production of The Sentinel Konvitz had that in mind. Unfortunately his opening scenes are confusing. In my notes I have a complaint about the many "false starts" to the novel.

Horror series and their box office franchise cousins often rely on reworking a set of motifs and plot devices to link all the books or films together into a larger oeuvre. Fans of a series especially will expect certain key elements in any novel or film claiming to be part of the series. The Guardian goes beyond the peppering of familiar elements and tries instead to retell the entire story but with the genders reversed. Apparently the sentinel switches from nun to priest everything there's a hand-off.

Next there's the Vatican. Dan Brown isn't the first by any means to drag the Vatican into the plot. I suppose if there's a gate that's keeping Hell shut they'd be interested but frankly the lengthy scenes of the brave priests felt tacked on. Their scenes are clearly there to raise the feeling of terror but they just didn't work for me.

The ultimate sour note for me though is the truth behind Faye and Ben Burdett's identities. The Sentinel of course has the two randy lesbians who try to corrupt the innocent (and frigid! Alison) so that she can't become the next guardian of the gate. So homophobia isn't anything new to the series but here it is taken too far. A husband and wife and their adopted son become the target of Chazen and his legions from Hell just because the wife is transgendered.

So the moral of the story is: if there is a scary priest or nun who is blind, deaf and paralyzed living on the top floor of the apartment building you plan to rent and you are either a) the opposite sex of said priest or nun or b) gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered, then run for the hills and find a better apartment somewhere else! Also avoid apartment buildings owned the the local diocese as these might be poorly disguised hell mouths. show less

This horror novel was probably more shocking in 1974 when many of its readers would have felt a shiver at its atavistic theologically disturbing horror (a gate to hell in a New York brownstone), one that might pull some of them back to their catholic childhoods.

I can imagine that many readers might be like the two main characters, rising young professionals who had come into the exciting world of 1970s New York from small towns and suburbs precisely to escape the restrictions of a catholic show more upbringing with its shame and guilt.

The amusing thing here is that the writer is a Jewish American and not a Catholic, cleverly tapping into something so sociologically real that it could give him a best seller and a film. Perhaps this is why it is always on the edge of not ringing true about real catholic sensibilities.

The story's ostensible horror is of an ancient demonry ready to burst out and consume the world if someone like themselves fails to become a dessicated shell, redeem themselves of past sin and become the sentinel of the title, holding back the horde through their flawed holy presence.

Maybe the actual horror is of becoming a dessicated shell stuck at home away from the bright lights of the city and yet here the horror lurks in your first rented flat. draining you dry from afar. Such terrors - psychological and theological - have lost much of their power in half a century.

As a best seller, it must have had some force at the time. It was published near the tail end of stories of satanic horror and ambiguous clericalism triggered by Levin's 'Rosemary's Baby' (1967), more famously filmed by Polanski. The libertarian demonic brushed up against the communitarian.

It is neither particularly well written nor badly written. An execrable opening is balanced by some good evocations of 1970s New York life but the implausibilities are too great and the behaviours too inexplicable to take it seriously as a major work of horror fiction. show less

This was originally written as a movie idea, but after it was rejected, the author turned it into a novel, which went on to sell millions of copies. He then got to write the screenplay for the movie, which was fairly popular. It definitely reads more like a movie. The characters are very poorly drawn, but there are lots of cinematic moments of pretty good horror. Overall, however, the story is really stupid and silly, and some of the dialogue is laughable. A lot of stuff happens here, so it show more keeps you engaged as you read. But when you are done, you will just sort of nod your head and say, “Okay.” Given that it concerns a New York City brownstone and a young woman, you might think you are in “Rosemary’s Baby” territory—but at least the author displays a bit of originality. The scenes in the apartment are pretty effective, but the clash between satanic forces and “The Sentinel” is just kind of funny. The author wrote one or two more novels, but concentrated on his career in the movie business, which is probably a good thing for us! show less

I've always had a penchant for horror based on Catholicism, so when I picked up "The Apocalypse" at a BookCrossing meeting, I decided to get hold of a copy of "The Sentinel" as well and read them both. I did think I'd only read one of these books before, but I must have read both of them, since I remembered the weird neighbours from the first book, but all mixed up with the plot of the sequel.

Strangely enough, my previous read also featured a nun called Therese, although in that case it was show more her birth name rather than her religious name.

Sister Therese (formerly known as Allison Parker) is dying, and her successor must be manoeuvred into taking her place. But which of the inhabitants of the apartment block built on the site of the old brownstone has been chosen as the new sentinel, and which of them is actually a disguised Charles Chazen? show less