Oct 012014
I’d never read anything by Peter Straub before, and I was curious about what type of story this novel would be to actually be called Ghost Story. My copy began with excerpts from reviews describing it as a terrifying novel that would give me nightmares no matter how many ghost stories I’ve read before.
As I read Ghost Story, I began to wonder if those reviewers were talking about a different book.
Warning: this review will include spoilers. If you haven’t read Peter Straub’s Ghost Story and don’t want to know about key revelations and plot events, turn back now.
My main issue with the novel is that it wasn’t scary. In fact, it wasn’t particularly interesting. The prologue was good, and made me want to know more about this man and the mysterious girl he kidnapped for reasons unknown. But once we hit the main story, I lost interest in it until around the 300-page mark, when things started happening in the story’s present. If it takes 300 pages for me to become interested… well, I probably wouldn’t have stuck with this one if it wasn’t for class.
The pacing issues didn’t end there, either. After a while, it felt like it was dragging on–like we should have hit the climax and ending already, but instead we had to plod through more scenes to get there. Once the antagonist really started picking off characters, I expected more action, less huge paragraphs of exposition. Throughout the books, the ones I dreaded the most were what I thought of as the “and” chapters, where there would be paragraph after paragraph summarizing events, each starting with “and” while jumping to a new character.
Speaking of the characters, I hated them. For example, when they didn’t seem to comprehend that Milly Sheehan would be upset about Jaffrey–come on, I know they didn’t realize she was in a relationship with him, but they couldn’t even believe his housekeeper would be concerned about more than the “disproportionate amount of money” (169) he left her?–or when Don explained that as soon as he met Alma, she was “already more important” (213) than his then-girlfriend, I found myself wondering how I was supposed to care about the fates of these idiots.
To be fair to Don, Alma probably had him under her spell by then, but there’s no excuse for the rest of the cast to be a bunch of jerks.
Peter wasn’t a jerk, but he wasn’t very interesting, either.
One last thing about the characters–there were too many names. A large cast of characters, along with antagonists who use multiple identities, were introduced too close together. Some of the minor characters I lost track of several times, and I’m not sure if the revelation that Eva Galli was another incarnation of the antagonist was supposed to be a twist or not. I backtracked through the pages to try to find out if they’d already said who she was, gave up, and just assumed she was that same woman.
I liked the general idea of Eva/Anna/Alma/etc. There was great horror potential in the spooky woman connected to each of them, responsible for the death’s of people in their pasts, always there in every story, under a different name.
Then it complicated matters by becoming Alan Wake.
There were enough similarities I wondered if Alan Wake was inspired in part by this element of Ghost Story. I couldn’t find anything to confirm it, but they have many things in common: the plot being influenced by “occurrences from an unwritten book” (316), the antagonist’s ability to warp reality, the attempt to trick the protagonists into believing they imagined it all, and the main antagonist being an evil force in a dead woman’s body with the ability to resurrect and control the dead.
But even if the stuff from Don’s book entering reality seemed to serve no purpose except to make the plot more complicated, it was the last revelation that made the antagonist stop working for me.
In class, we talked about subtle horror versus blatant horror. One idea that came up was how some things lose what makes them frightening when you understand them. This book proves the concept for me. I would have been so much happier if we never really knew what the villain was. As soon as Don revealed she was a shape-shifter, it lost me. Eva/Alma/Anna was much scarier before I knew she could turn into a lynx.
Not only that, but she and her kind are the origin of all ghost, vampire, werewolf, zombie, whatever stories? No, no, no no no.
Maybe it’s because the title made me expect a ghost story. Maybe it’s because, in a story where not a lot of interesting things happened, the creepy ghost lady held my interest. Whatever it is, the truth about her made me cringe, and it was just one more reason to hope for the end of a story that had already gone on far too long.
When I finally did reach the end, it wasn’t satisfying. I realized early on that Don would survive, because the novel had to circle around to reach the prologue. I expected a dark ending from there, a hint that the cycle would continue forever.
And once we reached that ending, it still wasn’t over. It continued on to finish things forever, but after numerous false climaxes where our protagonists fought these deadly foes, Don cutting a wasp to pieces just wasn’t enough payoff to make the ending worthwhile… especially for something called “Ghost Story.”
I couldn’t agree more about the way the villain was handled. It was the only engaging part of the story for me. This reincarnating evil that was always there in some form or another, always destroying their lives. There is a grain of awesomeness to that. But two things spoil it. One is the motivation, which is never clearly explained. I suppose if we are ants to these entities then us biting them would engender a bit of a grudge, but I don’t go back to an ant colony where one ant bit me ten years ago and set about murdering them. It just isn’t worth my time. And of course there is the reveal. Shapshifters. It was just a huge let down. Like you, I would have preferred not knowing what it was. (one of the aspects I really liked about Hill House was that things were never completely explained) I also thought the end was odd, though it did make me laugh. I was trying to imagine what the security guy thought about some guy stabbing a wasp over and over. I just don’t think the end of a horror novel should make me laugh.
Exactly. For me, the shapeshifter explanation made it all feel a little silly anyway, and then the ending with the wasp was just goofy. I really would have preferred it if it ended with Don alone with the little girl, to leave it ambiguous as to whether or not he ever stops her.
I don’t think critics read the same book, but from your review I’m certain you and I did. You hit pretty much everything I did with some extra. I’m glad you brought up how the events crossing over from Don’s novel seemed to serve no purpose. I caught that too. Every time “Dr. Rabbitfoot” was mentioned I had a full bodied cringe. Seriously, Dr. Rabbitfoot? Ugh. I don’t know why Straub did it. Was he poking fun at Kings writer cliché? Did he just need the book to be even longer? I don’t get it.
I still don’t understand how that made sense in the plot, either. In Alan Wake, it makes sense–the Dark Presence exerts its power through creativity, and twists Alan’s story into a horror story it can then use to affect the town. Why was it happening in Ghost Story, though? Was it just Eva/Alma/Anna trying to freak Don out? If so, I’d file it away as yet another illogical piece of her motivation…
Obviously, Allan, Amber, you, and I all read the same book that was not the same book that the critics reviewed. This was, for me, the worst of the books I’ve had for homework assignments this term.
I was so bored by the beginning of the story that there’s absolutely NO way I would have finished it had it not been a required homework assignment. Especially since I strongly disliked all of the characters just about as much as it sounds like you did.
I am also on board with how much you disliked the origin story for the villain.
Overall, seems like we had the same/similar reaction to the book and for the same/similar reasons.
Definitely. I may have complained a little bit about Hell House, but at least that was interesting enough to keep me reading. Ghost Story got pretty painful at times.
I’d suggest seeing the movie, personally i thought it was a good book, however i agree about the shape-shifter aspect as i wanted something that was more about a ghost or haunting instead of something that turned out to be some sort of supernatural cryptozoological being. In the movie they cut out all of the shape-shifter stuff and made it an actual GHOST STORY… even if by today’s standards it’s a bit dated (1981).
I know i’m coming to this post late, i’d read the book when it came out and saw the movie when it came out, and decided for the heck of it to throw on the unabridged audiobook version just recently while i did some unrelated research. figured i’d read up on a few more recent reviews of what was considered at the time to be the watershed of Peter Straub’s literary carreer.
Hmm, I’ll have to look into the movie sometime. Thanks! (Dated? 1981 is new compared to half the movies I watch, haha.)
actually yeah i noticed that you had posts up about Amityville and Legend of Hell House, so i guess we’re on “the same page” (har har) movie-wise :), anyway, hope you enjoy the movie, Alice Krige was wonderful, and it was the last movie that Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and John Houseman were in (The Chowder Society).
All of these posts were for a class I took on “The Haunted,” where we looked at several books and movies about ghosts, demons, etc.
Ah, okay. 🙂
Yeah i read as much, anyway i’ll bid you adieu before i get carried away on the subject lol.
Have a good one. 🙂
Thanks, you too.
I think you are all missing a few very important things about this excellent novel. The Chowder Society is experiencing a ghost story, and after the death of their friend Don Wanderley the only way they can deal with the psychological repercussions of his death are by telling each other ghost stories. That’s the meaning of the title. You have to remember also this book was written in 1979, right around the time Stephen King was the literal king of horror. King had a style of slapping you right in the face with ghouls and goblins and bloody murder. I mention this because King and Straub are friends and have collaborated, and King himself has nothing but High Praise for Straub’s writing. And it’s not only Stephen King, he’s won the Bram Stoker award at least eight times. For Straub to step out of that comfort zone of easy “blood and gore, ala Freddy Krueger and bam! you have a New York Times bestseller on your hands” to this much darker psychological Thriller, was extremely refreshing. Focusing more on character development and small town life, it’s no wonder the critics ate it up. It’s head and shoulders above anything else that was being churned out at that time.
This broad sucks. Cringed because of s fictional character in a book from the late 70d early 80s? Get off your PC train sister.
The part I cringed at was the revelation that she was a shape-shifter and the origin of all ghost/werewolf/etc. legends. You can disagree with me about that plot point and my opinion of the book all you want, but I have no idea where you got the “PC train” idea from.
Finally! Someone who feels the same way I do. I don’t understand why people are calling the writing brilliant. It was mediocre at best. The characters felt flat to me and I struggled keeping a fair few of them apart in the beginning. I agree with them being pretty horrible. The story has potential, but the writing is pretentious and doesn’t draw you in. The monsters just get boring and a bit silly
Yeah, it really didn’t work for me.
When the lawyer started telling a gender-flipped white trash version of ‘The Turn of the Screw’, I expected it would turn out he was trolling his friends, but alas he was not. That was the most WTF part in a book full of them, and yes sadly including the not thinly veiled enough incest subtext and the wasp ending.
It had some strange decisions, for sure.