Ghost Story by Peter Straub

 

The late Peter Straub was a master of literary horror

Ghost Story opens with a prologue in which a desperate man is driving south to Florida with a kidnapped girl. The scenario immediately calls up expectations of a sexual predator and a terrified child, but everything seems off. The man seems more worried than malign; the girl seems unconcerned with her situation. We cut to the main body of the novel, then, and it weaves so many intriguing tales over the course of its more than 500 pages that we forget all about the desperate man and the captive girl. When the narrative finally works its way back to them in the final pages, the reader feels a pleasurable jolt of recognition and comprehension.

Review

Straub takes his time in this novel, slowly building up a big cast of characters, a lived-in sense of place, and a complex story that stretches across decades. The first three quarters of the book are brilliant. The patient reader will luxuriate in the author's beautiful prose and his deft unfolding of the layers upon layers interconnected tales told by the members of the Chowder Club. In the final quarter of the book, however, as the narrative begins to build toward its conclusion, and as Ghost Story becomes more of a straightforward horror yarn, as blood gushes and disemboweled bodies start to pile up, the telling, ironically, begins to drag and the logic of it all wears disconcertingly thin.

The title of the novel is a bit of misdirection in that you eventually realize that the evil entities at work in its pages are not ghosts in the traditional sense. Straub hints, rather, that they may be immortal, vengeful creatures who form the reality behind stories of ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. To go back to the word "ironically" again, the story would probably make more sense if they really were ghosts.

Ghost Story is the very quintessence of a "literary" horror novel, and, even with its shortcomings, well worth your while if you like slow-building suspense. Stephen King fans will find that certain elements of the plot are reminiscent of Salem's Lot. But there's more of the EC comics fan in King, and more of Henry James in Straub. Me, I like 'em both.