Cover

Usually I can just breeze right through a Jack Ketchum novel but this one took me a little while to read. The characters are really well written and the whole thing is completely believable. This feels like it could have actually happened in real life. The story goes like this: a Vietnam vet (Lee Moravian) lives deep in the woods and tends a marijuana garden. His wife and son have just left him due to his flashbacks and his inability to differentiate between then and now. A writer and several others go camping nearby his garden and a random gunshot before they start hunting for food takes the vet back to Vietnam and the unsuspecting campers are the surrogate VC. The story itself moved quite quickly and Ketchum literally made me feel sorry for all of the characters. It felt more like a tragedy of circumstance than a horror story, although some of what is described in the novel is truly chilling. All in all, another really great novel from the mind of Jack Ketchum.

This was an interesting morsel that took no time at all to get through, in fact I gobbled it up in half a day and was ready to tackle even more reading that day. Ketchum enchants the reader with his smooth prose and easy to digest writing, making the story shocking, quick and genuinely real when it comes to the crazy characters and the trouble they got into. Lee, the mentally confused Vietnam vet isn't the only odd ball character here, some of the people who go camping are even stranger than him, maybe not deadly enough to kill someone but they sure have issues. When the two intense worlds combine the battle is not only for the sake of their own interests, but a battle for life and survival in its crudest and rawest form. Lee Moravian is startled by his unwelcome guests, but his clouded mentality never stops keeping track of Kelsey, his wife and also his mistress and a few of his guests. Pretty soon the city people find themselves cornered by war style traps and a stalker who has nothing better to do than outwit their every move and make their camping trip a living hell. I thoroughly enjoyed the tale and was on the edge not only about the vet but also about the complex and volatile relationships between the other characters. I was instantly drawn into the book and had a good time reading it on a lazy Sunday. I love theses types of stories, the lost in the woods tales, or creepy islands, Antarctic or desert tales when the wish for survival makes the desperation swell and the story grow into something intense. This was a fun, quick read that was thoroughly enjoyable. The ending was a surprise as well, it left me with a feeling of buzzing unease but also a deep curiosity of what the future held, well done and not obvious at all. - Kasia S.

Vietnam has broken many human beings as Lee Moravian can attest to. Instead of leaving the war behind, however, Lee is still stuck somewhere between fighting for survival and living in "the real world." This has left Lee in an awkward position: not only is Lee protecting himself, he is also seeing the enemy everywhere. And to campers that are in the middle of Lee's war, this means there is no safe place to hide. Over the course of the last few years, many great things have happened in the literary world. One of those things happens to be the re-release of many a unattainable title, like Offspring, Peaceable Kingdom (collecting the stories in one place anyhow), the Unabridged version of Off-season, collaborative efforts like Triage, and now Cover. I personally never thought I would get to read Cover in my lifetime - it had been out-of-print for quite some time and, as the years piled on, the cost also became more formidable. With new additions like this one, I now get to read Ketchum's older works and now get to see something I have wanted to see for many a year. I now get more Ketchum books to look over that delve into both his past and present works of art. One of the things that Ketchum does better than anyone in the field is the building of characters. In a few short paragraphs he can show a reader things about someone that really describes mindset and reasoning, and he does this with both the bad and the breakable alike. That was one of the things that drove me to his books - after I looked over Red, I could get enough of the descriptions Ketchum brings to the page. The same thing happens in Cover as well, with his characters providing a landscape that really showcases just what Ketchum can do. In my mind he does not take too much time as he crafts a storyline, either, stopping after the necessary has been added. That makes me happy when I read his works because, in a world flush with books that drone on and on, he seems to know the cut-off point. Add to that the fact that books like Cover have now started repopulating the literary world and, boom, you have yourself something beautiful. If you are interested in checking out Ketchum for the first time, this would not be the book I would start with. Depending on your type of pleasure, I might start with Red (if you want touching and a need for revenge), Off-Season (if you want a little bit of horror and a starting point that did not receive the acclaim it deserved) or The Lost (if you want to see a character break). This is not meant to chastise Cover because it is a great book and because it has been put into print for now (not the words For Now and remember that things go out of print fairly quickly these days). If you are not a first-timer and want something from Ketchum that has not been around for a while, you should definitely take this opportunity. It is a great read, has a story that reminds me why I like Ketchum's humanized monstrosities, and (most importantly) because you can now get

Jack Ketchum has been hailed as a writer whose unflinching gaze at man's darkness is disturbingly thought-provoking. Consistently, he's displayed a knack for taking readers to uncomfortable places, daring them to stare harsh reality in the eye. Originally published by Gauntlet Press, "Cover" still finds relevance in today's world. In these pages, Ketchum captures the horrors of war, after a soldier has returned home, a supposedly "safe" place forever tainted by the violence he's endured. The Vietnam War has left Lee Moravian a hollowed-out shell. A bundle of nothing more than trained impulses, Lee struggles for normalcy. The simplest emotions are atrophied muscles he doesn't remember how to use. When his wife finally leaves him, fearing for her and their son's safety, Lee is left alone to grapple with his ghosts, deep in the quiet forest he calls sanctuary. A chance arrival of celebrity campers intrudes upon Lee's delicately strung-together world. The stress of solitude warps his mind, dredging horrifying flashbacks to the surface. Reality twists into a haunting reflection of the jungles of 'Nam, and as Lee slowly fades from the present into the past, he prepares to wage bloody war upon his newfound "enemies". Though reflecting upon Vietnam, "Cover" is still relevant today. Ketchum aptly portrays the fragmented perspective of a man torn by a violence beyond most humans' understanding. It's a complicated work. It's hard to blame Lee, especially as Ketchum interweaves the veteran's terrible war experiences into the present-day narrative. It's an excellent re-printing choice by Leisure, because in this time of war and strife, amid political and military campaigns driven by agendas and "goals", it's important to consider the broken human lives that are often dismissed afterward.