Goodreads Project, Part 8: Horror
I’m working on a Goodreads project, reading a semi-finalist from each of the fifteen categories Goodreads uses for its Best Book of the Year Award. If you click back through my last seven blog entries, you can see reviews of the books I read in Fiction, Historical Fiction, Mystery and Thriller, Romance, Romantasy, Fantasy, and Science Fiction. When I started, readers were still voting. Since then, Goodreads has announced the winners.
I don’t usually read Horror, so I wasn’t surprised I hadn’t read any of the books on this list. But I enjoyed Misery and 11/22/63, so I chose Stephen King’s Holly.
A Horror Story
Holly is about the investigation of a series of murders. The central character, Holly Gibney, has appeared in some of King’s previous books. The reader knows from the start that, unlikely as it seems, the murders are carried out by a pair of elderly, retired professors. Holly only gradually realizes that the killings are connected, and the reader only gradually realizes why the professors commit them.
That “why” is very creepy. I assume it’s the reason this book lands in the Horror category rather than Mystery and Thriller. Also, the unlikely nature of the murderers makes things weirder. In an author’s note, King says he saw a newspaper story with a headline something like, “Everyone thought they were a sweet old couple until the bodies began turning up in the backyard.” He thought, “Killer old folks. That’s my story.” So, there you go: Seize inspiration when and where you find it.
Set During COVID
The book is set in 2021, with the Delta wave of COVID raging. At the book’s start, Holly’s mother has just died of the disease. Mom was a COVID denier who refused to be vaccinated or wear a mask. Holly thinks of her mother’s death as unnecessary and political. Almost everyone Holly interviews asks if she’s vaccinated so they can remove their masks or tells her that COVID is a hoax. It was a real reminder of what it was like to live through those days. It also helps make death omnipresent in the book.
Characters React to Aging
The book has characters of all ages, but one repeated question is how various people react to aging. And once again, we have the nearness of death made present in the book. There’s an elderly poet, an uncle with Alzheimer’s, an old guy who’s had a stroke but is still sharp. There’s also the murderers. All these people contemplating old age made me think, “Hm. How are you doing Stephen King? You good?”
It’s not unusual for writers to include issues they’ve been thinking about in their lives, the politics of COVID, for instance. King is 76. It wouldn’t be surprising if he’s been mulling over issues having to do with aging. I’d say some of the characters are luckier in how they age, but some amount of loss and pain are inevitable, and some characters work through them in healthier ways.
Time Lines
Someone in my book club commented that most of the books we’d read recently moved back and forth in time. Holly does too. I assume this is a thing right now. It’s a good way to deliver backstory. It’s especially useful if a character is investigating the past. At book club, it came up during our discussion of Geraldine Brooks’s People of the Book, in which a book conservator is digging into a book’s history.
Next
The next category is YA Fantasy.
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Glass Girl
Seventeen-year-old Emlin is about to become a fully-fledged crafter of dragon-inspired stained glass. Then her mother is murdered following a mysterious, nighttime trip to the palace. Windy City Reviews calls it “a page-turning crime novel set in a fantasy world with a dynamic teen protagonist.”
Bookshop (alliance of independent book sellers)
Inspired Quill (UK small press that makes more money if you buy direct)
