![]() ![]() A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Despite its flaws, readers who decide to just give in and go along for the ride will have a diverting couple of hours ahead of them.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. This makes very little sense, but it’s occasionally important to the plot. Oh, and there’s also some business about Charlie’s love of classic film and history of trauma combining to create a singular condition in which she momentarily leaves reality behind and gets lost in cinematic fantasy. In other instances, they are as inevitable as the denouement of a Greek tragedy. When these dramatic turns are genuinely surprising, it’s because they are absurdly baroque. The back end, though, is filled with twists. This feels like a lot of time to spend establishing something that every reader is going to assume. It doesn’t seem reasonable at all, but this is what has to happen if Sager is going to write the story he wants to write, so….The whole first half of the novel is Charlie discovering that her driver may not be who he says he is, that he may plan to do her harm. In the opening pages, she spends a lot of time wondering if it seems reasonable for a young woman who just lost her friend to a serial killer to travel across two states with a man she’s never met. She’s a heroine who doesn’t seem much interested in self-preservation another way to put that is that she behaves in ways that are astonishingly stupid-again and again and again. ![]() Sager’s fans may also recognize that Charlie fits a type. ![]() Here, the whole narrative unfolds over one long, eventful night in 1991. This is Sager’s fifth novel, and readers familiar with his brand of psychological horror know that he favors high-concept plots. She’s posting a flyer looking for someone to give her a ride home when she meets a stranger who just happens to be going her way. A hellish road trip from the author of Home Before Dark (2020) and Lock Every Door (2019).Īfter her roommate and best friend is murdered, Charlie Jordan decides that she has to get away from Olyphant University. ![]()
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