Night Things
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Built by a madwoman during the Victorian era, Lake House is a 160-room mansion in the Adirondacks with stairways that lead nowhere, bizarre rooms designed to distort the senses, endless series of mazelike halls—and a century-long history of violent deaths.
Lauren Montgomery, her son Garrett, and her new rock star husband Stephen Ransom have just arrived at Lake House, anticipating a long and relaxing summer. But what they don’t know is that their rental home is actually a labyrinthine puzzle at whose center lurks something unspeakably evil . . .
An inventive and chilling haunted house story in the vein of Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves, Michael Talbot’s Night Things (1988) is a page-turning mixture of horror and fantasy from the author of The Delicate Dependency.
“[T]he most ingenious haunted house in years . . . a grand puzzle . . . Haunted-house fans will enjoy the inventive architecture of Lake House.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Talbot is a great storyteller . . . Night Things has twists which will pleasantly surprise even jaded horror readers.” — Weird Tales Magazine
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Talbot's latest novel (after The Bog) is a bit of an oddity. Although ostensibly a horror story, stylistically it's remire Hale breeds and trains racing quarterhorses and Diana gardens assiduously. Dynamic and well-organized as the Caldwells appear to be, their family life is in acute crisis. Their son Roger has dropped out of college and works as a cook in California; daughter Bethany is on probation in a residential program for teenagers, having participated in a car theft. Hale's business is overextended, and he is drinking heavily. Diana, her academic career and extramarital affairs equally unsuccessful, is painfully conscious that she and Hale have failed to become the perfect parents they set out to be. In clear, measured prose Lowry copiously and meticulously describes the Caldwells gardening, cooking and caring for their horses, but this contributes little to our understanding and becomes tiresome. There are good sketches of minor characters, lifelike dialogue and a gripping conclusionbut the reader's interest is seized too late, and the final drama does not substitute for lack of depth, coherence or a commanding voice.
