The Town

Bentley Little was always one of those writers on the periphery of the authors I read. By that I mean, his books were right there in the horror section, next to the Koontz’s and the King’s and the Simmons’ and the McCammon’s I read voraciously, but for whatever reason, I had never given any of his books a shot. I decided to remedy that a few years ago with The Town.

I remember it having a fairly clever premise, with a family of five picking up stakes from their home in California and moving back to the desert town where the father grew up. I remember too rolling my eyes that the reason they were able to do it is that the father recently won the lottery. (Confession: I have a built-in bias against books that start with lottery show more winners. I think it’s lazy writing.)

The “clever premise” I mentioned is that after packing up and leaving California, their (I think) Eastern European grandmother asks the father if he remembered to invite “the keeper of the house” (or some such thing), a friendly demon in their folklore who watches over and protects the home. Now, the father never cottoned much to old world superstition and so had forgotten to “invite” the thing along with them to their new home. Big mistake.

I remember lots of bad things happening after that, and lots of people turning up dead in their isolated desert community. However, what I remember MOST about it was him writing about the (more than creepy) sexual awakening of the twelve-year-old son. Frankly, I don’t remember whether the demons had anything to do with that, but I thought it eyebrow-raising nonetheless.

In any event, creep factor aside, I enjoyed The Town enough to give another Little a shot, and went on to read The Vanishing. I remember this one started off with a bang, with a horrific murder on the very first few pages, with blood and viscera and organs all over the place.

This book too had a clever premise, having to do with a mysterious species of creatures living in the Rocky Mountains who (for reasons I can't recall) have become active again. I do remember though that they were sexual creatures. Very, very sexual. And I remember the book had lots and lots of weird, creepy sex.

And that was the end of Bentley Little for me. In retrospect, perhaps if I’d discovered him as a younger man, I might feel different. Or maybe, I just started off with the wrong books (I remember reading once that you have to read Little in a particular order to “get” him.) Alas, this was the order that I read him in. I congratulate him for finding his niche, though.

Even if I’m not in it. show less

A slightly yellowing copy from a library sale, purchased solely on the strength of a cover blurb advertising that the author is a stoker award winner.

Gregory Tomasov is the son of Russian immigrants, and comes from a small town in Arizona. He moved to LA after high school, and now he has kids of his own. He wants to move his family back to his old home town, where his family still has old friends and church ties. But just lately things have changed back home, and the small town is being menaced by a supernatural evil.

Not a terrible or unreadable book, but for me personally, it just lacked that spark that makes any of the characters seem alive, or that makes me want to pick it up again when I've set it down.

This is another novel by Little that I really like. It was a bit more scary than the last couple of his that I read and that probably helped me to like it even more. The novel centers around Gregory Tomasov and his family as they move back to the small town in which Tomasov grew up. This move was made possible after Tomasov won the lottery. But what they don't realize is that the house they move in to is haunted, and pretty soon it becomes the whole town that is haunted.

The spooky events and frights slowly build up and become quite chilly especially when major characters start getting killed. I'm always a sucker for having a major character that we have grown to know and like suddenly getting killed; it's so much more shocking and show more thrilling than a minor, nearly nameless nobody biting it. One of the other things that I liked about this novel was how the Molokan religion was a key part of the story but at the same time it wasn't thrust on us. The religion was just part of the story and not the "moral" that so many other authors make it instead. show less