Books can succeed, be worth your valuable reading time, in a variety of ways. Joe Hill's 'NOS4A2' is an immense success on two very different levels. Pick this book up in your local independent bookstore, and start reading it. Your next memory will be standing in front of the cashier paying for it. After that, prepare to surrender all your spare time to an intense, and intensely pleasurable to read modern horror story.
But memory is important in the reading of this book. A week after you finish, a month after you finish, years after you finish, you'll be able to go back and visit the places in the book, check in with the characters in this book again and again. There's a level of detail that immerses you in an experience so rich it will rival moments in your life.
'NOS4A2' is fun, very chilling, pleasantly surreal enough to map nicely against the actual weirdness that surrounds us. It's filled with stuff of life; screwed up families who manage to love one another in spite of all their human faults, men who are born bad and become worse, women who manage to carve a path through the obstacles of late 20th century and early 21st century American life, and children forced to grow up faster than their parents.
Hill tells his story with the easy assurance of a man who has something very complicated on his mind but has sorted it out into easy-to-grok tales. Victoria McQueen can find things. She can travel in a manner that is utterly impossible and totally believable. Charlie Manx has an unusual means of transport as well. He's used his gift, or perhaps it has used him, to turn children into monsters. Inevitably, these highways will cross one another. The collision will result in fatalities.
The layered revelations and plotting of 'NOS4A2' make putting together the puzzle of what is going on a true pleasure. Hill gives us a huge cast of characters but he makes each one unforgettable in their own right. Moreover, he actually likes all his characters, even the reprehensible ones, to the degree that they are all human and prone to error. In a book that tops out at just a smidge under 700 pages, Hill expertly orchestrates the tension on a variety of levels; plot character, the supernatural elements and the real-world crime elements. Every page begs you seek the one that follows.
Amid all the fantastic plot elements, great supernatural conceits, and wonderful characters we enjoy spending time with, it's easy to miss the primary fuel that drives this vehicle — Hill's alternately lovely, powerful, entertaining and chilling prose. There's a lot of terror in this book, but, as readers will realize in retrospect, not so much gore or even violence. Don't worry, there's enough to keep you sated. But Hill's a master at the telling detail, the finely-turned phrase that implies more than it says. There are a lot of great sentences here.
'NOS4A2' marks a striking return for the big, Dickensian horror novels that came of age in the 1980's. It's a ripping yarn about a damsel who puts herself in distress to save others and a thick slice of life in the here-and-now. Hill's use of the supernatural to evoke the horrors of this world is both entertaining and demonstrative of a deeply intuitive understanding of the perils of parenthood, the terrors and joys that turn every day into a series of increasingly dicey choices. 'NOS4A2' is a vehicle to take the reader on a vacation in purgatory. The memories you have may not be good, but they won't be yours, exactly. But you'll return to them, with the pleasure that only reading a great book can provide. Heaven and hell, not so far apart you've been led to believe.
New to the Agony Column
09-18-15: Commentary : William T. Vollman Amidst 'The Dying Grass' : An Epic Exploration of Simultaneity
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with William T. Vollman : "...a lot of long words that in our language are sentences..."
09-05-15: Commentary : Susan Casey Listens to 'Voices in the Ocean' : Science, Empathy and Self
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Susan Casey : "...the reporting for this book was emotionally difficult at times..."
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
