The Elementals

McDowell's ability to create ghost stories that aren't about ghosts is uncanny. This time the story is less swampy than it is full of sand, that's coarse and rough and irritating and gets everywhere. It's in fact evil sand! Or possibly haunted. Or maybe manifested from another reality. What sounds absolutely ridiculous manages to be a smouldering horror story about a haunted house and the things in it, or possibly in the sand itself, and the families caught up living next to it. McDowell never really defines his monsters or unveils their backstories in a way that keeps everything truly mysterious and alien, and avoids the pitfall of a Stephen King ending where it just turns out it was some evil alien rock that assimilated the sand.

I had no idea of what to expect when I picked up The Elementals. I don’t even remember where or when it was recommended to me. I certainly didn’t expect maybe the finest haunted house story I’ve read since The Haunting of Hill House (which happens to be an almost perfect novel, by the way).

The Elementals is quintessentially a southern gothic, replacing windswept moors and foggy nights with beachfront houses, unforgiving sun, weltering heat. But there’s lies, family secrets and blood and despair a-plenty nonetheless. The characters are strong and actually engaging, though maybe not fully likable, painted in bold strokes that might take a while to get used to if you’re used to more subdued depictions.

It’s also not, in fact, a show more ghost story, insofar as the actual supernatural element of the story refuses traditional genre classification and will resist any attempts at taming it by giving it discernable motivation, logic or cause.Rather than frustrate, however, this only acts to increase the feeling of dread and helplessness, making it actually scary at times. In that way, The Elementals also has more in common with cosmic horror, but without the sometimes overwrought cosmology of the lovecraftian tradition.

Don’t sleep on this one, probably one of the best this year so far for me. show less

This is in most ways just brilliant. There are a few oddities--these are a weird group of people, especially Father and Daughter Luker and India. The setting, on Alabama's Gulf Coast before it was adulterated by condominiums is unforgettable, as are the three houses at the center of the story. This is a slow-moving but engrossing tale that builds to quite a climax--but no spoilers here. 13-year old India and the long-time Black housekeeper, Odessa, are the brave heroines here, who have to face up to the "elementals" of the title. While there may be parts of this that remind you of other horror stories, I've never seen quite this combination before, and McDowell pulled it off almost flawlessly. (There really should be some sort of show more historical marker to mark the location of Beldame!) Michael Rowe's Introduction, while not containing any big spoilers, is best saved for last, when you can contrast his appreciation for the novel with your own. show less

Elementals?!? New fear unlocked. This Southern Gothic Horror classic was first published by Avon Books in 1981. I saw that it’s by the same author who wrote the screenplays for Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, so I was intrigued.

I wasn’t going to write a review, because I think there’s so much going on underneath the surface, and so much symbolism, that I’d need to read it again to fully digest everything. Then I decided to throw out a few thoughts anyway. I originally listened to this on audiobook, and R.C. Bray did a fantastic job with the narration and capturing the essence of so many characters.

I love a good Southern family drama, then mix in some horror and I’m hooked. In THE ELEMENTALS, there are two old show more families from Mobile, Alabama, connected through marriage, the McCrays and the Savages. At a place called Beldame on the Gulf, there are three Victorian summer houses — one owned by the McCrays, one owned by the Savages, and no one was sure who owned the third.

That third house was slowly being engulfed in sand, and though it appeared empty, it wasn’t. There was evil afoot, the families KNEW IT, but they still returned for holidays. The death of the Savage matriarch ignites a series of horrific events during another sweltering summer in Beldame.

I was completely absorbed in this creepy, atmospheric book. Much of it was a simmering slow-burn, as we get to know the bizarre characters and their complicated relationships, and the dark history of Beldame. Did I mention that they’re cut off from the mainland during high tide? There’s no way you could get me back there, knowing what they know, and ooh, they’re about to know more. Character-driven horror is the best.

I’m very impressed with Michael McDowell’s writing. Sadly, he’s no longer with us, but I plan on reading more of the work he left behind. show less

If you're looking for a deeply atmospheric, well-written and perfectly narrated novel to fill you with an inexorable dread, "The Elementals" is the book for you.

"The Elementals" has a remarkably powerful, cliché-free start, that embeds your imagination in the South like a throwing knife splitting a rotting log. What better way to start than with a funeral that goes from dire and depressing to deeply disturbing in a few pages.

I'd never read Michael McDowell before but I wasn't surprised to learn later that he was an excellent screenwriter. The style of"The Elementals" is cinematic in a lots-of-close-ups, see-the-motes-in-the-sunlit-air lighting and strange but intimate camera angles kind of way.

The characters, especially Luker and his show more preciously independent daughter India are engaging and believable. Despite being unconventional people (Luker came from around hear but he raised his daughter in New York City so you can't exactly expect them to be normal, can you?) become the anchor points for sanity in a world that is sliding towards the lethally strange with the slow grace of an unmoored house sliding of a cliff into the sea.

The heat becomes almost a character in the story in its own right. India discovers for the first time the heat and humidity induced languor of the South that bends time and alter perceptions. Luker explains to her that this hot humid coastal resort of Beldame is:

"...a low energy place. The kind of place where you can only get one or two things done in a day and one of those is getting out of bed."
Not surprisingly, the horror in this book is of the slow but deeply disturbing kind. It seemed to me that the dread in this book had a pulse: slow and strong, like an ambush predator waiting on a branch.

Having this atmospheric tale delivered to my ear in R.C. Bray's gravelly but insistent voice was a remarkable reading experience. show less

What begins as a morbidly funny Southern Gothic slowly morphs into into creepy, spine-tingling horror. And it's not just things that go bump in the night, but completely horrifying things even in the bright light of a clear, sunny day.

The author, Michael McDowell, was from Alabama & I can say that I think he nailed the characters & setting perfectly. Just spot-on, every single one of them. Normally, my favorite creepy/horror books are vampire-based, but I loved this one. I keep few books, but I think I'll be hanging onto this one because it's one I'd love to revisit next October. From a die-hard vampire fan, that's high praise for a haunted house story. Totally worth it.

The Savage family of Mobile, Alabama, have a centuries old family tradition that to say it is odd would be an understatement. Every person that is born into the Savage family has a knife presented to them at their christening. The knife goes with them for the rest of their life. When they die, their knife is stuck in the chest, and then buried in with them. The Savages, also take photographs of all of their dead before they are buried. Dauphin Savage has "a whole box of `em." we are told. Now we have been introduced to this "Southern gothic/Addams Family". The Savage and McCray families have been brought together at a funeral and we see more of this eerie world that the author has created as the latest member of the Savage family, show more Marian, "the meanest bitch that ever trod the streets of Mobile" is laid to rest with a hole in her heart. After Marian Savage's burial, the two families go to Beldame, which is over fifty miles away for a vacation. Beldame is the setting for the majority of the book. There are three Victorian houses that were built in 1875 by the Savage family. Two are inhabitable... one, that is often only referred to as "the third house," Sand from the dunes has piled around the structure and all but sealed most every entryway into the house...but it still contains all of its original, now rotting, furnishings. Fascinated by the dilapidated "third house" and doing her best to see in and take pictures of the dwelling, 13-year-old India McCray is the first of the two families in a long time to sense and maybe catch sight of something that is not quite right... and capture it on film. One character, Odessa, a Black servant, plays a big part in what happens to the families during their stay. She has seen more, knows more, and understands more about what plagues and dwells in the "third house" than anyone. Odessa knows, rather they admit or not that they are all afraid of the sealed-up house. She warns: "They's just some houses that got something inside `em--a spirit like. No ghosts, no such thing as dead people coming back. Dead people go to heaven, dead people go to hell. They don't hang around. Nothing like that. They's just something that's inside that house." It is that "something" that obsesses India and which becomes the focus of the story as it slowly unfolds. The story reminded me a great deal of Shirly Jackson's "Haunting of Hill House"...which I remember reading over and over...the movie never did it justice. show less