Threats

Binge read this today. A friend sent it to me last year. Other than knowing we share some reading tastes, I knew literally zero about this book going in. I didn't read a summary or reviews or quotes about it.

And wow. It's weird. It's surreal. It kind-of touches on horror. And it also hit really hard for me because it deals with death. And grief. And spiraling into mental illness. There's also a crime. And tragedy. And a mystery. There's a lot packed into this beautiful prose, the bizarre pages, yet not a lot of direct answers. Much is open to individual interpretation, I think, & you/your life will determine your read on this.

One character seems to be researching words, among other things.

"More devastation has been linked to 'you'

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than anything else. The research is conclusive. I've researched the full canon. Since it was 'thou.' We're talking over six hundred years of devastation. Heartbreak. Accusation. And worst, worst? False promise." She leaned back in her chair and tapped a stack of books rising up from the floor, reaching above her elbow. "A lifetime of plans, dissolved. Each of them linked to 'you.' Tied there in the history of the world."

The weird piece of grief that broke my heart? David replaying an old voice mail. Short, standard, boring everyday stuff. Presumably a message left by his now-deceased wife. When he gets new messages, he listens to them, erases them. But the older one from his wife is always there. And he plays it. Every time.

Love it for its strangeness, its beauty. It took my breath away. And it broke my heart a bit too.

Well-crafted & hard to categorize. show less

At times the experience of reading Threats reminded me of having a conversation with a schizophrenic person: the grammatical logic is there, intact, but the semantic sense unthreads by the end of each sentence. You know it's nonsense but still your mind grasps for meaning, and sometimes finds it. In other passages reading Threats was like looking at random patterns on a wall and finding faces there, because our minds are so good at imposing that kind of order on random things. Sometimes a verb or an adjective was so unexpected in a given sentence that I imagined the author playing Mad Libs.

And yet I was so moved by this writing. That is the amazement of this novel for me. This is a novel that nearly obliterates the typical relationship show more between novelist and reader. Novels usually engage parts of the brain that are rational, logical, social. That's the kind of exchange between text and reader that novels can do well. Reading Threats was very different. I was disoriented by this writing. I felt the book left me to flounder on my own. But then suddenly I found myself making connections. As I read I would have feelings of compassion, recognition, joy, that may or may not be independent of "author's intent." I also had the feeling that whatever I decided to feel or imagine was happening would be completely ok with Amelia Gray.

As I read, I tried to think of literary precedents. "Lenz" by Buechner came to mind, or in contemporary literature, Remainder by Tom McCarthy. A few reviewers mention that the novel reminded them of Murakami. But in Murakami's novels any fantastic elements are corroborated by multiple characters, where I as a reader feel that I can count on a certain mode of reality being the "correct" reality to believe in, within the framework of the novel. Threats gave me absolutely no framework to count on. No firm ground where I could say "this is really what I'm meant to believe is the 'real' for this novel."

The word "original" is so sloppily used for almost everything that I almost hate to use it, but there it is: This is original writing. It gives me joy just to know that something so new and unexpected can still be written after all the thousands of years we humans have been writing stories. show less

I think that, for the average non-hipster, non-pretentious reader, everything about this book that entices you to pick it up proves to be an empty promise. Think about every bad characteristic of overly workshopped MFA manuscripts: "quirky" characters that don't remotely resemble human beings; ambiguity milked to an obscene degree; ridiculously tedious detail; and prose so affected and sterile that you are perpetually in a state of eye-roll. All of these are present and accounted for in Threats. Oh yeah, there's also a make-out scene that manages to be both the silliest and most revolting I've ever read.

Unfortunately, what is not present is coherent narrative, disciplined prose, or relatable characterization.

If you are inclined to show more read this for the mystery, don't. If you are inclined to read it anyway, then I suggest you heed any urge to abandon the book mid-stream. I didn't heed this urge, feeling that at pg 196 I'd already read too much to quit, and when I finally finished the book, I felt something not unlike fury at such shameless trickery and elevation of style over substance. show less

I found this an incredibly frustrating book. Gray writes like a dream, skillfully creating an odd dream-like world and populating it with strange and troubling characters. The tension is gradually ratcheted up and strange incidents follow one after the other and then... nothing. It all kind of fizzles out - you never get any sense as to what's behind the main character's baffling interactions with the world or what really happened on the night his wife died. There are wonderful bits scattered throughout (the threats that turn up on little slips of paper are wonderful - e.g. "I WILL CROSS- STITCH AN IMAGE OF YOUR FUTURE HOME BURNING. I WILL HANG THIS IMAGE OVER YOUR BED WHILE YOU SLEEP."), but lots of intriguing tracks are never followed show more and the complete lack of any real plot left me a bit drained by the end.

Side note: the book is not being done any favours by its blurb, which makes it out to be a thriller - it's much more experimental and fragmented and there's no attempt at any kind of resolution. show less

Creepy/disconcerting deep-dive into a crazy character (borderline unreliable narrator). One of my least favorite storytelling frameworks... yet I was compelled to finish the book.

I haven't been this disappointed in a novel in years. After reading some truly phenomenal reviews, I was as excited as I could possibly be to read Amelia Gray's Threats. Several days of excited, feverish reading later, I came to the end of the book, and my hopes were dashed as I realized to my great dismay that [spoiler alert] nothing happens! Gad! My worst kind of book.

[Previously] I'd picked up Museum of the Weird (Gray's earlier short story collection) not too long ago while browsing in a bookstore, and, while I don't usually judge a book by its cover, I was immediately captivated by the illustrations on the front (e.g., post-apocalyptic Rolex, human tongue sautéed in buttermilk, plate of hair) and brought it home knowing nothing show more about it other than it had nice production values. After skimming through the contents (skimming, yes, collections of short stories aren't my specialty) and reading a few, I knew she was a writer to watch out for. Her prose was excellent. So when I heard that she had a full-length novel coming out and I read those reviews I was naturally very excited.

[Back to the present] Threats—yeah yeah, I get it—isn't a traditional story with a beginning, middle and end. It's more a literary diorama of a deteriorating mind, as told from the viewpoint of just that very mind, so the reader is presented with a loose grip on reality presented by a thoroughly unreliable narrator. And up until the end, I was mesmerized. The writing was easily the best I've read in ages. The setup was nuanced and precise. All I needed was for something to happen at the end to tie together all of the various/sundry bit and pieces, breadcrumbs, clues, strewn about in the 277 preceding pages. And......... nothing! Argh. I'm sure there are plenty of readers out there who can enjoy a novel strictly for its writing. I need just a little more. show less

This book is fast. It grips the reader and steals their breath away. It will not let go. Even after it is over. This is a book that never truly ends.

Gray has a unique mastery of language. She strings together words in a visual and emotional way. Every detail, down to a man strumming his fingertips against his own knee, feels essential.

"Threats" absorbed the last two days of my life and spit them out in some convoluted, confused and prepossessing manner.