Disappearance at Devil's Rock
by Paul Tremblay
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A family is shaken to its core after the mysterious disappearance of a teenage boy in this eerie tale, a blend of literary fiction, psychological suspense, and supernatural horror from the author of A Head Full of Ghosts. "A Head Full of Ghosts scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare," raved Stephen King about Paul Tremblay's previous novel. Now, Tremblay returns with another disturbing tale sure to unsettle readers. Late one summer night, Elizabeth Sanderson receives show more the devastating news that every mother fears: her thirteen-year-old son, Tommy, has vanished without a trace in the woods of a local park. The search isn't yielding any answers, and Elizabeth and her young daughter, Kate, struggle to comprehend Tommy's disappearance. Feeling helpless and alone, their sorrow is compounded by anger and frustration: the local and state police have uncovered no leads. Josh and Luis, the friends who were the last to see Tommy before he vanished, may not be telling the whole truth about that night in Borderland State Park, when they were supposedly hanging out a landmark the local teens have renamed Devil's Rock. Living in an all-too-real nightmare, riddled with worry, pain, and guilt, Elizabeth is wholly unprepared for the strange series of events that follow. She believes a ghostly shadow of Tommy materializes in her bedroom, while Kate and other local residents claim to see a shadow peering through their windows in the dead of night. Then, random pages torn from Tommy's journal begin to mysteriously appear--entries that reveal an introverted teenager obsessed with the phantasmagoric; the loss of his father, killed in a drunk-driving accident a decade earlier; a folktale involving the devil and the woods of Borderland; and a horrific incident that Tommy believed connects them. As the search grows more desperate, and the implications of what happened become more haunting and sinister, no one is prepared for the shocking truth about that night and Tommy's disappearance at Devil's Rock. show lessTags
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BookshelfMonstrosity Though Disappearance at Devil's Rock centers on a missing child, while Elsewhere is a haunted house story, both creepy and disturbing novels are deft blends of psychological and supernatural horror where troubling secrets coming to light accentuate insidiously escalating dread.
Member Reviews
This is well-written, has excellent characterisation, is extremely well-paced and well-structured... and yet I ended up skimming it to get to the end. I wanted to know what happened, but I didn't want to read this particular book to do so. But I had to. Because this was the book it happened in. Does this make sense? Hell no. I think the problem was it's a book that slipped so smoothly and ingeniously between genres, from mystery thriller, to literary study in grief and loss, to ghost story, to horror, that I just couldn't get properly invested in any of them, but the underlying story still packed such a punch that I needed resolution. Urgh, I hate writing bad reviews of books that I admire from a technical standpoint.
A mother gets a phone call in the middle of the night: while hanging out with his friends on a clandestine late-night trek to Split Rock in a nearby state park, her young son has disappeared. As she and her family deal with the shock and grief, Elizabeth frantically searches for answers--which start to appear in the form of pages from a diary she didn't know her son kept, dropped without explanation on her living room floor. From his own words, she starts to piece together what happened on the night he vanished. Meanwhile, people around town have started seeing a mysterious "shadowman" peering in their windows late at night.
Since this is Paul Tremblay, there aren't going to be any clear answers to that question. I'm calling this a ghost show more story, although even that is not quite clear. Elizabeth, though, is clearly haunted by the specter of her missing son, and the visitations--whatever their explanation--are downright creepy. This book starts out a bit slow but gradually picks up momentum until it becomes unputdownable. Tremblay uses modern technology, such as webcams and social media, to good effect here. Although I found this book a little more confusing and a little less compelling than Tremblay's previous A Head Full of Ghosts, it was still a creepy Halloween read. show less
Since this is Paul Tremblay, there aren't going to be any clear answers to that question. I'm calling this a ghost show more story, although even that is not quite clear. Elizabeth, though, is clearly haunted by the specter of her missing son, and the visitations--whatever their explanation--are downright creepy. This book starts out a bit slow but gradually picks up momentum until it becomes unputdownable. Tremblay uses modern technology, such as webcams and social media, to good effect here. Although I found this book a little more confusing and a little less compelling than Tremblay's previous A Head Full of Ghosts, it was still a creepy Halloween read. show less
I am an admittedly cheap date when it comes to horror fiction but I am not undiscerning. The two unforgiveable sins in this genre are (1) mistaking grue for horror (spilled guts may be horrifying but this trope requires an abundance of splatter to maintain terror) and (2) a brilliant premise gone missing because of the writer's laziness or lack of talent. That said, I read them all, pecking around for the best, and so I know the real deal when I read it: Disappearance at Devil's Rock is so good that it can't strictly be called horror fiction. Like the best in this niche, it is a Sears Xmas catalogue of the fears and apprehensions that live within us all. And it is so well written that you'll want brownie points for reading it.
What an ambiguous book. There is a lot to dig into. I loved the references to urban legends, folk tales, satanic panic, and Joyce Carol Oates. The repeating themes of parenting your parents, being abandoned and loss of agency.
Tremblay is very good at writing teenagers. He did an excellent job in A Head Full of Ghosts too. Teenagers annoy the heck out of me. It's the reason I pushed this book aside earlier. Reading Tommy's, Josh's and Luis's dialogs were so annoying. Honestly, I can't stand teenagers. (And yes, I look back on myself as a teen with annoyance.) I don't know how teachers do it.
So Tremblay writes them well. They are incomprehensible. They can love their family at the same time they lie, steal, sulk, yell nonsense, sneak out, show more drink beer - just do incredibly stupid things. Tremblay makes it clear they aren't deranged psychopaths - They're just kids growing up and working their way into their adult skins.
Elizabeth and Kate were also well written, as were the tertiary characters.
Arnold. There are a lot of ways to interpret his character. Is he supernatural? A conman? A seer as he claims? Or is he just a batshit crazy borderline pedo? I read through the other reviews and I still don't know. Certainly he is malevolent.
Some of his statements seem to move his character into a different era. Tent revivals? Hobos? Those things are completely in the past. A lot of his stories are about different times and different places. Yet he talks about them as if he were there. Is he a proxy for the devil? Is he possessed? Or is he just a pathetic conman who manipulated a bunch of insecure boy children to do what he couldn't do?
The answers are ambiguous. The end of the book was ambiguous. You'll get no answers. I'm happy about that. It's something to think over instead of having an answer neatly wrapped up in a bow. show less
Tremblay is very good at writing teenagers. He did an excellent job in A Head Full of Ghosts too. Teenagers annoy the heck out of me. It's the reason I pushed this book aside earlier. Reading Tommy's, Josh's and Luis's dialogs were so annoying. Honestly, I can't stand teenagers. (And yes, I look back on myself as a teen with annoyance.) I don't know how teachers do it.
So Tremblay writes them well. They are incomprehensible. They can love their family at the same time they lie, steal, sulk, yell nonsense, sneak out, show more drink beer - just do incredibly stupid things. Tremblay makes it clear they aren't deranged psychopaths - They're just kids growing up and working their way into their adult skins.
Elizabeth and Kate were also well written, as were the tertiary characters.
Some of his statements seem to move his character into a different era. Tent revivals? Hobos? Those things are completely in the past. A lot of his stories are about different times and different places. Yet he talks about them as if he were there. Is he a proxy for the devil? Is he possessed? Or is he just a pathetic conman who manipulated a bunch of insecure boy children to do what he couldn't do?
The answers are ambiguous. The end of the book was ambiguous. You'll get no answers. I'm happy about that. It's something to think over instead of having an answer neatly wrapped up in a bow.
I was crazy about Tremblay's last one, A Head Full of Ghosts. His new book is not as wickedly entertaining, but as it got going it was a page-turner. The subject is somber: the disappearance of a young boy. Tommy Sanderson goes missing in Borderland Park after hanging out with his two pals in an area tagged with unsavory supernatural doings. His mother Elizabeth thinks she sees a shadow Tommy in the house, and then starts finding scraps of his diary in the middle of the floor. The diary describes an odd, possibly criminal older man who befriends Tommy and his buddies and is an obvious suspect in the disappearance.
There's the ghost angle. There's a zombie angle. There's a whiff of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There is a fair amount of show more teasing ambiguity which is clarified in an ending that is subtle enough that a reader might miss it. Don't miss it, though, because it's the same kind of chilling little coda which made "Head Full of Ghosts" so satisfying. show less
There's the ghost angle. There's a zombie angle. There's a whiff of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. There is a fair amount of show more teasing ambiguity which is clarified in an ending that is subtle enough that a reader might miss it. Don't miss it, though, because it's the same kind of chilling little coda which made "Head Full of Ghosts" so satisfying. show less
I can't get too much into this one since I don't want to spoil, but what a great book this was! This is my first Paul Tremblay and it definitely will not be my last. I saw that some reviewers complained about this one since it wasn't "real horror." I disagree. I got a sense of unease while reading and kept jumping a few times when the book transitions over to Tommy's diary/writing and the picture he drew. Last night I refused to go to sleep until I had started a romance novel to cleanse my palate so to speak. The characters in this one were so well developed. The writing was top notch. The flow of the book just draws you in until you can't stop reading. The ending was heartbreaking. This book also reminded me a bit of [b:House of show more Leaves|24800|House of Leaves|Mark Z. Danielewski|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1403889034l/24800._SX50_.jpg|856555] since this book was slightly interactive. Not as much as that book was, but enough to make you feel like you are reading Tommy's actual diary that you happened to find.
"Disappearance at Devil's Rock" follows Elizabeth Sanderson and the fallout that occurs after her 14 year old son, Tommy, goes missing. Elizabeth, her daughter Kate, and Elizabeth's mother are in a holding pattern of waiting to hear what the police can find about what happened when Tommy apparently left his friend's (Josh and Luis) in the woods at Borderland State Park night. Elizabeth starts to believe that something awful has happened to Tommy, and that his friends are not telling them everything. The book follows all of these characters and Tommy too (via his diary) that lets his mother and sister know what led to Tommy's disappearance.
Elizabeth and Kate left me gutted. There's so many good scenes in this one and dialogue. Kate is the bravest character ever. When she starts to realize that maybe Josh and Luis are keeping things from everyone she does what she can to get to the truth. When the two of them (Elizabeth and Kate) start to mysteriously receive pages from Tommy explaining that long summer and what led to Tommy disappearing, you can feel their fear over what was going on that they didn't see.
Tommy, Josh, and Luis are typical 14 year old boys, but you know that Tommy feels different and apart from things due to him still missing his father who left the family when he was 4 and then died later. Tremblay taps into childhood and later teen friendships that grow and morph into something new and sometimes dark when we get older.
The writing in this one was great. I don't know what else to say besides that. The book starts off with Elizabeth getting a phone call that her son is missing and from there the tension just increases as we go back and forth among everyone I mentioned above.
The book takes place in a town near Boston, but seems like a thousand miles away. The whole town of Ames feels dark and threatening after people start to report that someone is in their backyards and appears to be peeking in their houses.
The ending was a gut punch. No spoilers, but when we get to that final scene of Elizabeth and her reading....your heart just stops. I think this book still is horror, but a realistic and quiet horror. Not everything has to be blood and gore for it to be horror.
I read this one for the "Genre: Suspense" square. This book fits a lot of other squares too though such as "Terror in a Small Town," "Genre: Mystery", "In the Dark, Dark Woods", and "Sleepy Hollow." show less
"Disappearance at Devil's Rock" follows Elizabeth Sanderson and the fallout that occurs after her 14 year old son, Tommy, goes missing. Elizabeth, her daughter Kate, and Elizabeth's mother are in a holding pattern of waiting to hear what the police can find about what happened when Tommy apparently left his friend's (Josh and Luis) in the woods at Borderland State Park night. Elizabeth starts to believe that something awful has happened to Tommy, and that his friends are not telling them everything. The book follows all of these characters and Tommy too (via his diary) that lets his mother and sister know what led to Tommy's disappearance.
Elizabeth and Kate left me gutted. There's so many good scenes in this one and dialogue. Kate is the bravest character ever. When she starts to realize that maybe Josh and Luis are keeping things from everyone she does what she can to get to the truth. When the two of them (Elizabeth and Kate) start to mysteriously receive pages from Tommy explaining that long summer and what led to Tommy disappearing, you can feel their fear over what was going on that they didn't see.
Tommy, Josh, and Luis are typical 14 year old boys, but you know that Tommy feels different and apart from things due to him still missing his father who left the family when he was 4 and then died later. Tremblay taps into childhood and later teen friendships that grow and morph into something new and sometimes dark when we get older.
The writing in this one was great. I don't know what else to say besides that. The book starts off with Elizabeth getting a phone call that her son is missing and from there the tension just increases as we go back and forth among everyone I mentioned above.
The book takes place in a town near Boston, but seems like a thousand miles away. The whole town of Ames feels dark and threatening after people start to report that someone is in their backyards and appears to be peeking in their houses.
The ending was a gut punch. No spoilers, but when we get to that final scene of Elizabeth and her reading....your heart just stops. I think this book still is horror, but a realistic and quiet horror. Not everything has to be blood and gore for it to be horror.
I read this one for the "Genre: Suspense" square. This book fits a lot of other squares too though such as "Terror in a Small Town," "Genre: Mystery", "In the Dark, Dark Woods", and "Sleepy Hollow." show less
So, if you look back through my old reviews, you'll find this isn't the first book I've read by Paul Tremblay. If you stop and read that review, you'll see that I gave it three stars because I wanted my heart broken and didn't get it. Well, I got it.
This book is definitely a horror novel. But it's also very moving. As with Head Full of Ghosts, the pacing is excellent. It draws you in with quick, short chapters at the beginning, then slowly draws those chapters out toward the end. This tactic really makes sure you are emotionally devastated as you reach the end. Very effective.
I also went on and on about cleverness in my review of Head Full of Ghosts. The cleverness (and some nostalgia) is still there, but it's much more subtle, which show more helped keep me more in the story. (Also, one of the clever little callbacks references one of the most terrifying short stories ever. Good call Tremblay.)
Conclusion: this book deserves all the hype. Read it. show less
This book is definitely a horror novel. But it's also very moving. As with Head Full of Ghosts, the pacing is excellent. It draws you in with quick, short chapters at the beginning, then slowly draws those chapters out toward the end. This tactic really makes sure you are emotionally devastated as you reach the end. Very effective.
I also went on and on about cleverness in my review of Head Full of Ghosts. The cleverness (and some nostalgia) is still there, but it's much more subtle, which show more helped keep me more in the story. (Also, one of the clever little callbacks references one of the most terrifying short stories ever. Good call Tremblay.)
Conclusion: this book deserves all the hype. Read it. show less
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EVERY TOWN has its Devil’s Rock. It might be called something else — “Bunny Man Bridge,” or “Dead Man’s Curve,” or “Devil’s Peak” — but it’s a spot in which the landscape seems somehow imbued with evil, possibly from a supernatural force; its power exists largely in rumor, as cautionary tales pass from teenager to teenager, from generation to generation. Many of these show more stories feature a unique blending of truth and untruth, vague allusions to “that one kid” who died at that very spot under mysterious circumstances in a time long past.... Instead of looking to place blame on end-all, inhuman sources of pure evil, he creates a story where black-and-white rules don’t apply as well as we think they should.... For Disappearance, the devil is there the entire time, his implied presence dripping off every phrase and lurking in the back of the characters’ minds. Disappearance at Devil’s Rock is ultimately a story of the evil that we are all capable of without any help from a fallen angel wielding a pitchfork. One by one, the characters realize that dark impulses are not caught like a disease but lie locked within everyone, just beneath the skin. Tremblay has managed to drill a well deep past the tropes of the horror/suspense genre and into our real fear of the devil: that he is all of us. show less
added by Lemeritus
Paul Tremblay’s suspenseful new novel takes a close and painful look at how the disappearance of a 13-year-old boy shatters his family.... the novel also offers an abundance of fine writing. Unwelcome visitors to Tommy’s home “eventually float toward the open door like lost balloons.” Tommy’s baseball cap hangs by itself near the back door “like a dead leaf that hasn’t yet show more fallen.” Tremblay pays close attention to Tommy’s sister, 11-year-old Kate, and after a mother-daughter spat we’re told that “Elizabeth loves this smart-ass version of her daughter so much it breaks her heart, because it’s impossible that she can love equally all the versions of Kate to come.” ,,, Ultimately, Tremblay, who has two children, has written a book about parenthood, one that will be most fully appreciated by others who have known the mingled joy and heartbreak that accompany that greatest of life’s challenges. show less
added by Lemeritus
The most powerful aspect of Disappearance, though, is its immediacy. Tremblay doesn't shout or gesticulate. He whispers his tale, punctuating it with the "clicks and whirrs" of an air conditioner or the life-mocking ring of a child's bicycle bell. His characters are rendered vividly and sensitively. The ambience is all shadows. "No good news ever calls after midnight," Tremblay writes early in show more the book; "Nothing good happens in the middle of the night, right?" wonders one particularly cryptic character near the book's end. Not only are these bookends an example of Tremblay's immaculate storytelling, it hammers home the horror at the heart of Disappearance at Devil's Rock: That sometimes we can't truly see the ones we love until they've faded into the dark. show less
added by Lemeritus
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Awards
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Disappearance at Devil's Rock
- Original publication date
- 2016
- People/Characters
- Elizabeth Sanderson; Tommy Sanderson; Josh Griffin; Kate Sanderson; Alison Murtaugh; Luis Fernandez
- Important places
- Massachusetts, USA
- Epigraph
- Yet at no point is the work of the seer associated with the diabolical...She is the mouthpiece of God. -- Gerald Messadie, A History of the Devil
You will feel the way I do. You'll hurt the way I do. He's easily abused. The devil in his youth. -- Protomartyr, "The Devil in His Youth" - Dedication
- For Cole, Emma, and Lisa; the ones who keep me found
- First words
- Elizabeth is not dreaming.
- Quotations
- She has always wanted to knock out a wall, make everything more open concept like they do in those home-renovation TV shows she watches. They always make that kind of change look so easy and pain free with the bright colors o... (show all)n the walls and golden sunlight shining on everything like the renovations won’t ever go out of style or become obsolete again.
...he’s standing there, right there!), and maybe that’s a comfort, because if she doesn’t ever look perfectly straight ahead again, he’ll always be there, in the periphery.
Not only is everyone more than capable of making the worst decisions possible, those kinds of decisions are frighteningly commonplace and easy to make.
They talk about how Tommy comes from a broken home and lament the inexorable disintegration of the traditional family. They quote an anonymous source within the Ames police department saying that Tommy was into “not-so-good... (show all) stuff” and making terrible decisions. They talk about underage drinking and speculate on drug use and further illegal activities. They talk about the latest report, broken this afternoon by Fox News of course, that cites anonymous classmates of Tommy’s who describe him as a loner and obsessed with the zombies and anything related to the occult. They talk about the occult in the context of the rise of atheism. They talk about folklore and Satanism and its potential role in Tommy’s disappearance. They talk about the locals seeing a mysterious person or persons walking through their yards and standing in front of their windows at night. They wonder if what’s going on in Ames is evidence of a larger satanic cult or conspiracy and they talk about how ‘shadowman’ is trending on twitter. They talk about the mysterious man referenced in the Ames Patch article. They talk about what kind of relationship Tommy might’ve had with this person of interest. They call him a person of interest while law enforcement has yet to do so. They talk about pedophilia and other perversions associated with occult activities. They are loud and are almost yelling, sounding like they’re arguing with one another, but there is no argument; they’re all in agreement. These talking heads do not shy away from further speculation and extrapolation from the facts and nonfacts. It’s as though Tommy’s disappearance has become a national Rorschach test; they blurt out whatever it is they think they see in the chaotic inkblot. They do not once refer to Tommy as someone who needs help, and the only descriptors they use are “misguided” and “perhaps deeply troubled.”
Everyone is asleep. Nothing is awake. The quiet and stillness of the world at this time of night is both disconcerting and thrilling, like she’s finally seeing the truth of things, of how they really are.
There are infinite smiles. A smiling face is often the hardest to read.
The memories and emotions swell, and in the shadow of this world-destroying, two-thousand-foot-tall monster wave, there is horror and awe, and privilege, and a sweet, aching melancholy of wonder, of I was here when he was her... (show all)e, as the wave breaks over her and will continue to break over her. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Elizabeth unfolds the pages and starts to read.
- Blurbers
- Cutter, Nick; Gaylord, Joshua; Golden, Christopher; Hill, Joe; Langan, Sarah; Wendig, Chuck
- Canonical DDC/MDS
- 813.6
- Canonical LCC
- PS3620.R445
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Statistics
- Members
- 864
- Popularity
- 31,252
- Reviews
- 52
- Rating
- (3.70)
- Languages
- English, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 24
- ASINs
- 4
