The Ignored

Bob Jones is an average, run-of-the-mill guy. He has a beautiful girlfriend, has just gotten out of college, and is looking for a job. He is taken in at an office building, where his job isn't clear, his immediate boss hates him, and his colleagues seem not to notice he's there.That's when Bob begins to suspect something. His favorite songs are all top-5 hits. His favorite movies are box-office smashes. He likes prime-time TV, enjoys fast-food chains and hotel-esque decorating. Bob Jones is average.But he's not alone. He is being watched, being prepared, by a man named Philipe, a man who possesses a knowledge that Bob wants to have. Philipe proclaims himself as a Terrorist for the Common Man...and he, and his followers, are also Ignored.At first, life as an Ignored is interesting. Bob is finally among people like him, people who are Ignored. But then the glamor wears off. Philipe wants to do something, something big, something that will get the world to notice them. But they are being followed...and there is yet another threat, one Bob must face if he is to survive, one burning question that needs an answer:Can you be Ignored by the Ignored?Bentley Little throws aside his blood-n-guts horror to bring you a disturbing novel about a man who is so average, he goes unseen by most people. I have praised Little for moving around the "thinking-man's horror" novel, but after reading this, I must say that he's good at it.Back to my first question: Am I Ignored?Little has tapped into our psyche here. So many of these things corresponded to me, I realized that I had never known how deeply a horror novel could move me. I think, after reading this, you will be questioning your lifestyle as well. "The Ignored" is a novel by a singular author, about those of us who...fit in a little too well.

Little writes with passion and is a thinking man's horror writer of the first order.The Ignored is one of the best novels I have ever read and that covers about 1,000 or so books. He takes an ordinary concept and turns it into a brilliant piece of literature. Many think he is too splatterpunk and grotesque. He tones it down here and does a masterful job of write a "genre-less story." Not horror, not drama, most probably described best as black humor.Bob Jones is just your average everyday college grad.He interviews for a job he doesn't expect to get.To his shock, he gets it.He is very rarely ever noticed except for his immediate boss who humiliates him at all costs.Even his fellow cubicle worker hardly ever notices him.Until one day he shows up in a clown outfit and attacks his boss in the lavatory, stabbing him to death.Soon, he is accepted into a secret society of misfits and outcasts. They call themselves "terrorists" for the common man.And Little gets his juices flowing from there.Little writes about society and issues in a lot of his books. Here he "Goes Postal" and writes like he himself has encountered some of these things in his own personal life.Little is the heir apparent to King, now that Steve has annouced his retirement. Take over the throne, Mr Little!!!

I've read every Bentley Little novel with the exception of The Summoning. I've enjoyed every one of them to at least some degree, but The Ignored is by far my favorite. It was the first Little novel I had the pleasure of climbing into (and regretting climbing back out), so that may be part of its appeal to me, but I think it's mostly the stunningly original concept behind this book that makes it tower over his other work. If you've ever felt like an average person, someone without looks or personality traits that stand out from most others, then you need to read this book. I must be pretty "normal" because this story hit pretty close to home. I could really see myself in the narrator's shoes (this is a first-person story), so I found myself rooting for the guy even (especially) when things started to get violent. The types of people that the narrator hates, I hate. The types of feelings the narrator expresses, I've felt. I'll bet a lot of potential readers can relate to the material. I agree with others' opinions about the similarities to Fight Club, though that novel (and movie) didn't have quite the impact on me that The Ignored did. Still, it's a very appropriate comparison, and if you enjoyed one, I wouldn't be a bit surprised if you enjoyed the other. What's odd is that even though there is quite a bit of violence in The Ignored, it's probably toned down compared to a lot of his work, especially University. Despite that, The Ignored disturbed me more than anything else he's written. Little almost always has some graphic scenes in his books that are not only hatefully violent but disturbingly bizarre, like something you'd dream but soon forget within ten minutes of waking up. What I mean to say is that Little is amazing when it comes to thinking up violent disturbing imagery, yet The Ignored's lack of it doesn't make it any less frightening. Don't get me wrong, there are still examples of that type of thing in The Ignored. What comes immediately to mind is when the narrator dresses up in a clown suit, goes to work armed with a knife, and...nevermind, I don't want to ruin it for someone who hasn't read it yet.I can't think of a book in any genre or category that I'd give a higher recommendation to. The Ignored is listed in Stephen King's On Writing as one of the "best books of the last few years" or something like that, and I couldn't agree more. Not only is the story totally engrossing, but Little's style of writing is just perfect. I'm amazed when people confuse clear, concise, and effective (but simple) writing with *bad* writing. If you want to get bogged down with ineffective, purple prose that doesn't flow off the page, there are enough horror novels out there to last a lifetime. I'm thinking Anne Rice, Kathe Koja, and Peter Straub to start with. But if you're a "common man" looking for an absorbing page-turner, then Little ranks up there with the best of them.

OK, the following might be a strange review, because while I give this book the 5 stars it deserves (yes, it is Little's best book), I can't give Bentley Little himself, the writer, more than, say, 3 stars. As an aspiring writer with about 50 semi-pro magazine credits and 2 or 3 professional ones, I admit I sometimes use Little as an inspiration. If he can get writing like this published, then why can't I, I figure. But the ideas are probably not as good. Little is, if nothing else, a good idea man.This is the Bentley Little paradox, in my opinion: He has some really great ideas, like the main idea for this novel, and can set up some great situations and plots, but he, well...he really stinks as a writer. He writes, at times, like a complete amateur. Like a ninth-grader trying to pad his composition. This is just one of the several infuriating examples of his style of writing (it is completely made up from the top of my head, but regular Little readers will be familiar with it): "He was upset, mad, not happy, and this did not make him feel good." That IS Little, right? Example # 2: Mention "horror books or movies", mostly movies, about 20 times per novel. Like this: "It was surreal, like something out of a bad B-horror movie." He literally does this at least a dozen times per novel, possibly more in "Dominion," where he went crazy with the "horror" references. The idea seems to be, mentioning that this is a ridiculous idea, or could never happen in the real world, makes it believable if compared to a horror fiction. You regular readers once again know what I mean here. Two or three times a book, yes, go for it, but not a dozen.Example # 3: On a lesser note, he likes to use separate paragraphs, during a character's thought processes, to put in the wordEvilNo, that was crazy.But he couldn't deny it. The (person, place or thing) was indeed evil.It was a cheesy word, something you might hear in a bad horror novel, and the word suddenly made him nervous, anxious, scared, apprehensive, not entirely comfortable.But it was true.The person, place or thing was...Evil.OK, enough sarcasm, only one more complaint. Example #4: Little doesn't seem to be able to edit out the minor events. Instead of writing, "He got into the car and drove away," like most writers learn to do within a year or two of first picking up the pen, Little will write "He opened the car door, slid in, adjusted the seat and mirror, checked the glove compartment for somethingevilfound nothing, turned the key, put the car and gear, and drove off."Again, you know what I mean. This is not a huge complaint. He just doesn't seem to know when he can skip over meaningless details.OK. I'm through. Whew. After reading 7 of Little's 10 books, 3 of them in the past 2 months, I had to let off some steam. After all this, I really do LIKE Bentley Little. He is an idea man, I suppose, not an artist with the pen, but he doesn't have to be if

Submitted for your approval, one Bob Jones, an ordinary man, a man so completely ordinary as to be unnoticed. But where the common man goes without recognition, he is unknown to even those who know him. Mr. Bob Jones, the average American, who will start a search for himself... among the Ignored.Did you ever read the Dilbert strip where he becomes invisible to his coworkers because his work had turned completely irrelevant? Well, what had been just an ingenious joke is now seriously explored by Bentley Little in this novel. Ludicrous? Granted. Outrageous? Of course! Not scary? Well... if you think so, you obviously haven't given as much thought as Mr. Little to all the possibilities in this.Let me get out of the way the complaints I have on Little's writing style. The way the narrator tells the story can be irritating: he keeps nagging on the fact he is Ignored, over and over. He behaves at first like a wimp. And he seems clueless to the fact that he is driving people away from him. It's enough to make you wish you could grab this guy by his neck and shout at him.That said, that's just part of the whole picture. The story is told in first person by Bob, and we grow aware with him, as each eerie scene follows the other, that he starts dropping from the face of the world, right in front of everybody's eyes... and no one notices. He struggles to understand what's happening to him, but this is just too bizarre to comprehend. It's just appropriate his narration comes through as alienated as him.Alienation... The novel seems at first to be about this. But as Bob investigates further into his condition, he realizes he might have become so transparent because he is so average, so middle-of-the-road, that he will never stand out among the crowd. He is a man that goes with the flow, never doing more or less than necessary, never stepping out of the line. That's when the real subject of the story appears: conformity. Bob is so bland and predictable as to become irrelevant.If you don't think this is enough to make this a horror novel, then one of several is the matter with you: You either don't care to find real issues in popular fiction and just want haunted house scares, or you are so confident in your individuality as to consider this conformity thing a big crock of crap, or you have just grown so numb to the problem as to not give a damn.Other reviewers have complained that the story should have been left at some point prior to the ending, that it just went on and on after making its point. I differ. Even though some of the secondary plots are never completely solved, Bob Jones' odissey would lack meaning if it wasn't told in its entirety. He would have remained an static figure until the end. But this way, he becomes alive.Mr. Bob Jones, a man who started to fade among the crowd and screamed out loud to be rescued.... from among the Ignored.