Wow, that was a wild ride! I loved it. Definitely a page-turner; I read fairly slowly, and I thought this 522-page book would see me through October, and now I need to choose a new spooky text.
I think Straub has similarities to Stephen King, and it's no surprise that they later collaborated. But the similarities are in terms of structure, character, plot ideas. Stylistically, they're pretty different. Stephen King writes like rock 'n' roll, Straub's more refined prose would be jazz or classical, which I was unsurprised to learn are Straub's favourite genres.
SPOILERS HEREON OUT
Actually, you'd think a book called Ghost Story would maybe be similar to King's The Shining, but if anything, the similarity is to 'Salem's Lot. The way both books carefully craft this small Northeastern town, both take a loving look at its residents, despite the dark secrets of most – if not all – of them. And the slow destruction of the town by insidious supernatural forces, though in King the bad guys win and in Straub they don't. Straub had been a writer of "lit-fic" before Ghost Story and I honestly wonder if he didn't take 'Salem's Lot as his model when setting out to do a horror novel. Not that I mind, I think Straub's book succeeds better.
Part of that is the characters. Ricky Hawthorne is such a wholesome, such a solid (though small and often weak) bastion of goodness. And Stella! A couple like them born in the early 20th Century probably wouldn't have even had the language for "loving, stable polyamory", but they understand each other and it works. Peter's a great character too. He starts the book as such a morally weak character, so ready to become unthinkingly complicit in Jim Hardie's crimes, and he grows imperceptibly into more of a moral backbone than Ricky or Don. And by the way, Jim was great too. He reminded me of Frank Booth in Blue Velvet, just this figure of constant, drunken, malevolence. The devil on Peter's shoulder.
As for weaknesses in the book: Like I said, I loved it. But I wasn't too convinced by the bad guys. I get the kind of dead-eyed, immortal evil they represent, but I think that archetype was done better by King (in 'Salem's Lot's Barlow and Straker, The Stand's Flagg), not to mention Lynch's Frank Booth and Killer BOB, and Anne Rice's Lestat. Plus I wish the bad guys could have been vanquished by some more clever means than just stabbin' and choppin'. I mena the baddies themselves are that clever, shouldn't it take something clever to defeat them?
Lastly, this isn't a criticism or a point of praise, just an observation. Did Straub say to someone, "I'm going to write a horror book!" and they said, "Cool! What will you write about: ghosts, witches, werewolves, vampires, zombies?" and he said "Yes."
Anyway, if you want a long, luxurious read for spooky month, this is a great one to get lost in.
by JGorgon