Ordinary Horror

David Searcy's psychological horror novel seems to inspire one of three different reactions: utter devotion, baffled confusion, or vehement disgust. A quick and fairly vague plot summary: Frank Delablano is a 70-year-old widower living in a drab housing tract in the suburbs. He's perfectly content to keep to himself, eat TV dinners, take landscape photos, tend to his beloved rosebushes, and live a quiet, quiet existence. He discovers that he may have gophers in his lawn that will imperil his roses, so he sends off for "gopherbane," a non-flowering South American plant. As it turns out, the non-flowering plants do indeed have flowers, beautiful, blue, strange flowers. But they do get rid of the gophers. After that, Frank begins noticing unusual things. There are far more signs for lost dogs and cats than normal. The streets always seem to be deserted. The company that sold him the gopherbane no longer exists. The little girl from next door is strange and disturbed. Frank's books on botany have very odd photos that make little sense. There are shapes on the window at night. There is an animal lurking out there in the dark. Is Frank just an old man creeping slowly into senility? Are the gopherbane plants actually evil? Are the plants causing unsettling hallucinations? Or is there something far more terrible coming? I love the stuffing out of this book -- the characters, the lush yet off-kilter language, the mood of the book, ominous and hallucinogenic at the same time as it wallows in the mundane humdrum of our everyday lives -- it all combines into something that is ineffably creepy. Even though I love this, I don't recommend it for everyone. If there are monsters in the book, you never see them. There is no blood dripping from the ceiling, no demonic voice in the cellar, no tentacled gods in the ocean. There are long stretches of the novel where nothing happens, and we watch nothing happen for several pages of Frank's quiet and slightly befuddled observation. Many reviewers find this unspeakably unpleasant; just as many find it unspeakably delightful. I would dearly like to pigeonhole David Searcy someday and ask him what on earth happens in the last dozen pages, even though I know he'd just smile and ask what I thought happened. I have no idea if Frank has lost his mind in a perfectly normal world, if Frank is a sane man in a world that's shredding to pieces, or if both Frank and the world have lost their grip on reality. Maybe the ordinary horror is that no one went mad and nothing unnatural happened -- just life, lost in the wind, drab and dying on an empty suburban street.

The wildly divergent reviews of this author's work make one thing very clear: This is high quality writing which doesn't leave anybody unaffected. Literary horror is a very different beast than "regular" horror writing. This book isn't meant to be a fast-paced thriller in the Stephen King tradition. It isn't meant to be read at a breakneck pace. Readers who come to it expecting that will likely be disappointed (thus the negative reviews), but those who read with open minds will find new levels of horror and lovely, provocative writing. This book is evocative, elegant, contemplative, and does a wonderful job of pointing out the menacing aspects of mundane suburban life--the things most people don't notice, but which suddenly take on scary aspects when viewed more closely. What do we really know about our world? Are we sure about that? One small misstep, taken for innocent reasons, might just set off a chain of slowly building, innocuous-seeming events which lead to eventual destruction. Once that chain of events takes hold, how long will it take for others to notice? This isn't a horror story to wash over us while we sit idle. It's one with which we must engage and participate.Give this book a chance. Stretch your own thinking, and you'll be rewarded.

I am not a great reader of the genre, but this is no ordinary horror story. It is one of the most intelligently written books of its kind ever printed. (That is, if there are other books of its kind.) I found myself alternately drawn to and repelled by its characters, but I couldn't put it down. It is dense and eerie and wonderful. Without being obvious or grotesque, it quietly "gives you the creeps."

This is a wonderful piece of writing. It is Camus possessed by Magritte. It is is no less than a highly perceptive and introspective intelligence talking about the cold and fearful apects of human existence. It is oddly funny and scary at the same time. But it requires your work and your attention. It IS a horror story, but so non-formulaic as to render it almost non-generic. If you enjoy a subtle writer who communicates touch, taste, smell and sight in new and meaningful ways, forces you to think about your own inner darkness, and who tells a very interesting tale in the bargain, then this is for you.