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We had a monster in the river, and a secret in the lake. We had a ghost that haunted the road behind the wheel of a black dragster with flames on the hood. We had a Gabriel and a Lucifer, and a rebel that rose from the dead. We had an alien invader, a boy with a perfect arm, and we had a dinosaur loose on Merchants Street.
Cory Mackenson is twelve years old in 1964, in Zephyr, Alabama. This is the story of that year in that place. There's an overarching plot concerning the murder of an unknown man at the bottom of a lake, but most of the book is about Cory growing up in a place that's both magical and real, in both beautiful and terrible ways. Zephyr is the white town, and Bruton is the black town. Segregation, racism, and the Civil Rights movement are major parts of the story; the tone is often nostalgic but it's the nostalgia of a man for the boyhood he loved, not the nostalgia that believes the past was objectively better.
Reminiscent of Stephen King and Ray Bradbury in their more wistful modes, this novel has elements of horror and dark fantasy, but also lots of humor and beauty. Despite its clear inspirations, it feels very much its own thing. There's genuine magic and monsters, but some elements that could be magical or science fictional turn out to be metaphors, fantasies, or wonders of the natural world. This gives the whole book a feeling that there are wonders and terrors everywhere and in everything, and whether or not they're strictly real is less important than what it feels like to experience them.
A lot of the chapters are constructed as self-contained short stories. One of my favorites is about Cory and his friends and their dogs growing wings and flying, told in an almost magic realist style. Is it real magic, or a game that feels like real magic? There's a clear answer, but the chapter would have been just as satisfying if it had been the other one. In another chapter, Cory meets characters who we gradually realize are Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and Dracula. Or possibly a washed-up boxer, his manager, and his trainer. Or maybe it was all a dream... but in this book, a dream is never just a dream.
I won't argue for this as a perfect book by any means, but I think it's a legitimately great one for all its flaws. As it says in the prologue, it has a dinosaur that runs amok, a Wild West gunslinger, a very cleverly constructed murder mystery, a monster in the lake, a semi-sentient bicycle, a ghost car, a green feather clue, the world's slowest handyman, the world's strongest glue, and more. Much more. Robert McCammon wrote other books I've enjoyed but he never wrote anything else like this. He put everything in it.
( Read more... )
Content notes: violence, some kid-type grossness, bullying, depictions of period-typical racism and racist and homophobic slurs, dead dogs and other dead animals. If you want to avoid a really gruesome dead dog story, it's chapter "Case #3432."
Cory Mackenson is twelve years old in 1964, in Zephyr, Alabama. This is the story of that year in that place. There's an overarching plot concerning the murder of an unknown man at the bottom of a lake, but most of the book is about Cory growing up in a place that's both magical and real, in both beautiful and terrible ways. Zephyr is the white town, and Bruton is the black town. Segregation, racism, and the Civil Rights movement are major parts of the story; the tone is often nostalgic but it's the nostalgia of a man for the boyhood he loved, not the nostalgia that believes the past was objectively better.
Reminiscent of Stephen King and Ray Bradbury in their more wistful modes, this novel has elements of horror and dark fantasy, but also lots of humor and beauty. Despite its clear inspirations, it feels very much its own thing. There's genuine magic and monsters, but some elements that could be magical or science fictional turn out to be metaphors, fantasies, or wonders of the natural world. This gives the whole book a feeling that there are wonders and terrors everywhere and in everything, and whether or not they're strictly real is less important than what it feels like to experience them.
A lot of the chapters are constructed as self-contained short stories. One of my favorites is about Cory and his friends and their dogs growing wings and flying, told in an almost magic realist style. Is it real magic, or a game that feels like real magic? There's a clear answer, but the chapter would have been just as satisfying if it had been the other one. In another chapter, Cory meets characters who we gradually realize are Frankenstein's Monster, the Mummy, and Dracula. Or possibly a washed-up boxer, his manager, and his trainer. Or maybe it was all a dream... but in this book, a dream is never just a dream.
I won't argue for this as a perfect book by any means, but I think it's a legitimately great one for all its flaws. As it says in the prologue, it has a dinosaur that runs amok, a Wild West gunslinger, a very cleverly constructed murder mystery, a monster in the lake, a semi-sentient bicycle, a ghost car, a green feather clue, the world's slowest handyman, the world's strongest glue, and more. Much more. Robert McCammon wrote other books I've enjoyed but he never wrote anything else like this. He put everything in it.
( Read more... )
Content notes: violence, some kid-type grossness, bullying, depictions of period-typical racism and racist and homophobic slurs, dead dogs and other dead animals. If you want to avoid a really gruesome dead dog story, it's chapter "Case #3432."
