Title: A Dark Matter

Author: Peter Straub

Genre: Horror, Literary Fiction

Publisher: Doubleday
Publication Date: February 2010
Hardcover: 416 Pages

The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favors of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body—and the shattered souls of all who were present.

Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night, and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives. As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. Unfolding through the individual stories of the fated group’s members, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that will satisfy Peter Straub’s many ardent fans, and win him legions more.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did I get this book: Review Copy from the publisher

Why did I read this book: I am a huge of Peter Straub’s, and have been since I first read Ghost Story as a teen. So, when we were offered the opportunity to read and review A Dark Matter – and to interview Peter Straub himself! – I was ecstatic.

Review:

On an evening pregnant with violence and possibility in 1966, a group of eight young men and women trek out to a meadow and perform an ancient ritual, following the charismatic spiritual guru, Spencer Mallon. At the end of the evening, only six emerge from the meadow – one boy disappears completely, another’s mangled, shredded corpse lies dead in the grass. Even those lucky enough to emerge with their lives, however, are forever changed by the event. Lee Harwell, best friends with four of those who went to the meadow, has always felt on the periphery of this extraordinary event. Unwilling to buy into Spencer Mallon’s teachings and affected persona, Lee refused to join his friends that evening, and only decades later decides to seriously piece together the mystery of what happened that evening. Now a famous author, Lee finally pursues answers: from “Dilly” Olson, the handsome young man that followed Mallon for years before landing in prison; from “Boats” Boatman, a kleptomaniac that has lost his defining edge; from Meredith Bright, the impossibly beautiful and coldly inhuman senator’s wife; from “Hootie” Bly, the innocent boy that went mad after that evening, and who can only speak in quotations from books; and from “the Eel,” Lee Truax, Lee Harwell’s beautiful wife that gradually lost her sight after that evening in the meadow.

Though billed as something of a supernatural horror novel, A Dark Matter is much more of a psychological book. It’s a subdued novel in the fashion of Rashomon or Lost, using different character perspectives to gradually build a complete picture of events. But it’s also more than just a book about solving the mystery of “What Happened That Fated Eve!” It’s also an exploration of relationships and characters as they have changed over the years. All this, of course, filtered through the outside perspective of a narrator that has no knowledge of the event, but has seen how his friends have been affected by that remarkable, supernatural experience. As Lee Harwell explores the memories of the past, he collects and records each character’s story – in terms of writing, this translates to a bizarre, yet satisfying, format for the novel. A Dark Matter is essentially a collection of shorter stories, connected by Lee’s narrative and his own piecemeal understanding of events. What should be an awkward, disjointed read is instead a rewarding, quirky one that simply works. I loved the metafiction aspect of the book (i.e. readers know Lee is writing these stories for a book, just as Lee is conscious to the fact he is writing a story). It simply worked.

As for the characters themselves, those entities behind the recollections, they are a strange, motley crew. Lee Harwell, our hero, isn’t really a hero. Of all his high school friends, Lee was the only one smart enough (or is it stubborn?) not to buy into Spencer Mallon’s B.S. peddling. And yet, the whole driving force behind the book is Lee’s inherent outside-ness, his position on the periphery of a life-changing event that cast a shadow on the lives of all his closest and most loved friends. It’s an intriguing juxtaposition – though Lee reiterates numerous times that he’s glad he didn’t meed Spencer Mallon in 1966 and that he’s happy he did not go to the meadow, the reader can’t help but feel he regrets this, deeply. As a narrator and protagonist, Lee Harwell is a very human, frail dude. Susceptible to human failings and emotions, Lee’s one well rounded voice. The other characters, however, lack the same rounded development. For one thing, it’s a little pet peeve of mine when everyone in a book is ridiculously good looking – Mallon is likened to a young Harrison Ford (circa Raiders of the Lost Ark), Dilly incredibly handsome, Boats only slightly less handsome, the Eel completely, heartstoppingly, breathtakingly beautiful. In fact, it’s the Eel that I wish had more of a character, as she’s always on the periphery and on a pedestal that her husband has (sub?)consciously elevated her to at every turn of the page.

The best characters were, without a doubt, Meredith Bright and Hootie Bly. The scene when Lee finally meets the beautiful Meredith is chilling and made of awesome – Meredith’s beautify is the grade of perfection you see with plastic surgery on cougar trophy wives, vampiric politician spouses, the Nicole Kidmans of the world. Her ruthlessness and narcissism is simply dumbfounding. Hootie, however, is the character that steals your heart. After going mad, losing himself to a prison of words after the Meadow, Hootie is committed to a mental institution – where he has remained for decades, until Lee and Dilly come calling. Hootie, a boy with a photographic memory, speaks only in quotations – his favorite being Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. He is the unmarred innocent, the idiot savant that comes to life in a way that is unique and memorable, quite literally stealing the show from the other members of the group.

While I loved some of the characters and the actual structure of the book, my main problem with A Dark Matter was in how loose and amorphous the story was. Firstly, all of the kids from the meadow never blame Mallon for what has happened to them – which I admit is kinda cool (besides the fact that Mallon gives me the willies). It seems a little weird that these generally smart, impossibly beautiful people were so easily taken in by a dime-a-dozen, pseudo-spiritualist moocher – and that years later, after going blind/mad/to prison/etc, they still all love Spencer Mallon.

Also, A Dark Matter is built up around this mystery of what each character saw in the Meadow, and ultimately the vision is different for each character and there are no concrete answers – even the Eel’s final revelation is a little underwhelming. But, as I finished the book and thought about it for a while, I came to my own Lee Harwell type of discovery. A Dark Matter is not so much about the what as it is the how. It’s a defining, and as Lee says, a liberating experience. The supernatural elements of the book (which aren’t very prominent) are nothing compared to the psychological development of the story – it’s about the hold this event has put on all the characters’ lives, inflicted on them by themselves.

Ultimately, I enjoyed A Dark Matter, as a work of literary fiction. Absolutely recommended to fans not only of Mr. Straub’s horror, but of a well-written, thought-provoking, and ultimately emotionally liberating story.

Notable Quotes/Parts: From Chapter 1:

A Few Years Back, Late Spring

The great revelations of my adult life began with the shouts of a lost soul in my neighborhood breakfast joint. I was standing in line at the Corner Bakery on State and Cedar, half a block down the street from my pretty brick townhouse, waiting to order a Swiss Oatmeal (muesli) or a Berry Parfait (granola), anyhow something modest. The loudest noises in the place were the tapping of laptop keys and the rustle of someone turning newspaper pages. Abruptly, with a manic indignation that seemed to come from nowhere, the man at the head of the line started uttering the word obstreperous. He started out at a level just above ordinary conversation. By the time he found his rhythm, he was about twice that volume and getting louder as he rolled along. If you had to settle on one word to yell over and over in public, wouldn’t you pick something less cumbersome? Yet he kept at it, spinning those four lumpy syllables every possible way, as if trying them on for size. His motive, for nothing actually comes from nowhere, soon became obvious.

Obstreperous? ObSTREPerous? OBSTREPEROUS? Ob-strep?-ER-ous? OBstreperous?

Lady, you think I’m obstreperous now? This is what he was saying. Give me another thirty seconds, you’ll learn all about obstreperous.

With each repetition, his question grew more heated. The momentarily dumbfounded young woman at the order counter had offended him, he wished her to know how greatly. The guy also thought he was making himself look smart, even witty, but to everyone else in the shop he had uncorked raving lunacy.

His variations were becoming more imaginative.

Obstreeperous? Obstraperous? ObstrapOROUS?

To inspect this dude, I tilted sideways and looked down the good-sized line. I almost wished I hadn’t.

Right away, it was obvious that the guy was not simply playing around. The next man in line was giving him six feet of empty ?oor space. Under the best of circumstances, people were going to keep their distance from this character. Eight or nine inches of white-gray hair surged out in stiff waves around his head. He was wearing a torn, slept-in checked suit that might have been ripped off a corn?eld scarecrow. Through a latticework of scabs, smears, and bruises, his swollen feet shone a glaring, bloodless white. Like me, he had papers under his elbow, but the wad of newsprint he was clamping to his side appeared to have lasted him at least four or ?ve days. The puffed-up bare feet, scuffed and abraded like shoes, were the worst part.

“Sir?” said the woman at the order counter. “Sir, you need to leave my store. Step away from the counter, sir, please. You need to step away.”

You can read all of chapter 1 and chapter 2 online at the book’s official facebook page, HERE.

Additional Thoughts: Check out the pretty effective book trailer below:

Also, make sure to check out our very own Q&A with the master of horror himself, Peter Straub HERE.

Rating: 7 – Very Good

Reading Next: Except the Queen by Jane Yolen & Midori Snyder

On this edition of “Chat With An Author” we bring you the ineffable Peter Straub – horror author, poet, and occasional guest star on soap opera One Life to Live. It’s no secret we’re fans of Mr. Straub’s work (so far, Thea has talked two unsuspecting readers into writing reviews of his work), so when we were presented with the once in a lifetime opportunity to interview this prolific author, we jumped at the opportunity!

Here to talk about his new novel, A Dark Matter, ladies and gents please give it up for Peter Straub!

The Book Smugglers: First and foremost, thanks for taking the time to “chat” with us! A Dark Matter is your newest horror novel, about a group of teen friends in the 1960s who follow a charismatic college campus guru and unleash a cataclysmic evil that forever changes them. What was the creative impetus behind writing A Dark Matter? What inspired this book?

Peter: The book began when I started to remember some strange, fraudulent but charismatic men who wandered through Madison, WI, in the mid-sixties. They had mysterious, prophetic things to say; they had studied mystic texts and traveled through exotic lands; it was their self-imposed task to impart their wisdom to younger minds. It was their unacknowledged task to live for free at their acolytes’ expense, to stay in their apartments, drink their liquor, appropriate their clothes and their girlfriends, and to take drugs.

The Book Smugglers: A Dark Matter seems to flow organically from your past work, incorporating elements from your earlier novels and building upon them. In particular, A Dark Matter uses the same varied character perspectives and metafiction-style devices that you’ve used in your Blue Rose Trilogy (Koko, Mystery, The Throat). You’re a writer that doesn’t seem to be afraid to experiment and push the narrative/structural envelope. Do you ever fear that readers (or those gorgon-esque reviewers) may not “get” your writing?

Peter: Some don’t, of course. For two decades anyhow, a certain class of reader has been complaining that my books are too slow, that the payoff isn’t instant, and that too much is going on. Who needs all this stuff, they say, and what good is it in the first place? I can’t worry about these people; they already have plenty of writers who give them exactly what they want. What I want to do is to reach the readers who have not as yet given me a try, and to give the readers I already have, whom I love beyond measure, work that is as good as they deserve it to be.

The Book Smugglers: On that note, the actual structure of A Dark Matter is pretty unconventional – the book unfolds through stories and collected memories. Many early reviews liken A Dark Matter to Akira Kurosawa’s classic mystery film Rashomon, and for good reason. Why did you experiment with this new eccentric structure in this book? Did any other films or books like Rashomon influence A Dark Matter?

Peter: To tell you the truth, I never thought of the Kurosawa film. Nor was it influenced by any other film, actually. It just came to me, after years of wondering where this ship was headed, that it was going to move from one version of the event in October, 1966, to another, maybe three in all, and that these different versions would reflect the characters and ambitions of the people who delivered them. So, it seemed to me though I had never planned to do this, that the book would have three endings, one after the other, with the last being the best, truest, and most comprehensive. It is a very odd structure, I know – in fact the structure is like this: a summarized introduction; an interpolated short story; some left-field speculations about evil; and three endings. This is perfectly nuts, it shouldn’t work; but it seemed to work anyhow. I liked it, I thought it read in a very satisfactory and involving manner.

The Book Smugglers: Your books, A Dark Matter included, explore horror of a psychological and supernatural nature, and also manage to traverse the Never Never Land between “genre” and “literary” fiction – a gap that has claimed many an author in its unfathomable depths. How do your books appeal to both genre fiction fans and the literary types?

Peter: We shall see. It seldom seems to me that I actually have made the wonderful genre crossover that I felt was the actual heart of the particular novel I was writing—or, more accurately, that hardly anyone noticed what I was at least trying to bring off. Reviewers all described my books as works of horror, and that was that.

The Book Smugglers: Many of your novels (particularly those books in your Blue Rose Trilogy) use unreliable narrators – a favorite technique that we love reading here at The Book Smugglers. Why do you use this type of narrator in your writing? Do you have any particular favorite unreliable narrators in fiction?

Peter: Well, in actual life, every single narrator you meet, including you and me, is as unreliable as can be. Everybody shapes and shaves experience while describing it, everybody frames himself or herself in a better, stronger role and in a more flattering light than may truly have been the case. We can’t help doing this, it’s how we are built. So the unreliable narrator is no more than an aspect of psychological realism. It is extremely interesting, however, to come across narrators who do not understand that they are telling very partial or inaccurate “truths,” also narrators who tell deliberate untruths because lying to the reader and the other characters in the best way to get what they want.

My favorites would be the narrator of The Good Soldier, Ford Madox Ford, and The Sacred Fount, Henry James.

The Book Smugglers: You’re most well known for your work in the horror genre (with five Bram Stoker awards under your belt), but you’re also a poet with several published collections. You’ve also written and edited collections of short stories, won the prestigious World and British Fantasy Awards, and have had a recurring guest role on a soap opera. Basically, you do it all. Do you have a favorite genre or medium to write or create in?

Peter: I’m in love with the novel, and have been since my teens. And because I love genre work but think it need have none of the limitations generally associated with it, it is very gratifying to me that so many younger writers have moved right into the gap you mention above, and without worrying at all about it, mix horror/fantasy and general literature into one wonderful thing: Kelly Link, Michael Chabon, Graham Joyce, Kevin Brockmeier, Dan Chaon, Brian Evenson. They’re great.

The Book Smugglers: Who are some of your favorite and/or most influential authors?

Peter: Apart from those I just named, I could list James, Hawthorn, Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark, Donald Harington, Raymond Chandler, Dennis Lehane, Philip Roth, David Plante, Bradford Morrow, John Ashbery, Fernando Pessoa, Stephen King, Roberto Bolano, Rodrigo Fresan, John Langan, Sarah Langan, John Crowley, and a lot of others.

The Book Smugglers: You’ve collaborated with Stephen King in the truly excellent books The Talisman and Black House. [An aside: When you and Stephen King start tossing ideas around, we imagine its something like the proton-pack streams being crossed in Ghostbusters (i.e. unfathomably beautiful and universe-ending dangerous).] How does the two-author collaborative book writing process compare to writing a book on your own?

Peter: With Steve King, the difference is liked being carried along in a big, perfectly-tuned Italian sports car capable of hitting 150 without getting the shakes and humping along on a touchy old motorcycle that slams into every bump and hole and conks out every ten miles or so. That’s the difference, pretty much. I’m the old motorcycle.

The Book Smugglers: The Talisman has recently been released in comic book format – do you read comics? Did you have a say in the art direction or publication process of the comic book adaptation?

Peter: I read graphic novels, a lot of them, and got into them through Neil Gaiman’s Sandman books. With my dear “One Life to Live“ friend, Michael Easton, I wrote a long, hairy graphic novel called The Green Woman, which was illustrated by John Bolton and will come out from DC/Vertigo later this year. Michael and I are very proud of this book.

With The Talisman comic, Steve and I were consulted at every step in the pricess, and continue to be so.

The Book Smugglers: We hear rumors that a third book in The Talisman arc is in the works – is this true? What other writing projects do you have simmering?

Peter: At some point in the next year or so, Steve King and I will begin pondering the third and last Jack Sawyer story. Nothing else is simmering, except for the vague outlines of a story set in Victorian England and the present day.

The Book Smugglers: The zombies are coming! The zombies are coming! You only have time to save ONE book, ONE movie, and ONE TV show. QUICK! What are they?

Peter: Oh, grump, I hate zombie, but here goes, anyhow: The Ambassadors, Franny and Alexander, and The Wire.

The Book Smugglers: We Book Smugglers are faced with constant threats and criticisms from our significant others concerning the sheer volume of books we purchase and read – hence, we have resorted to ’smuggling books’ home to escape scrutinizing eyes. Have you ever had to smuggle books?

Peter: No, I long ago gave up having to smuggle books into my house, and now they pour in through the doors every day. I just completely gave up guilt for buying books and music.

Peter Straub is the New York Times bestselling author of more than a dozen novels. Two of his most recent, Lost Boy Lost Girl and In the Night Room, are winners of the Bram Stoker Award, as is his recent collection, 5 Stories. Straub was the editor of the two-volume Library of America anthology The American Fantastic Tale. He lives in New York City.

We’d like to extend a huge THANK YOU to Peter Straub for taking the time to “chat” with us! For more information about Peter Straub, make sure to visit his website, www.peterstraub.net. And make sure to stick around as later today we review his newest novel, A Dark Matter.

Hola compadres!

Another Sunday, another stash, another installment with some fabulous news to share!

Book Blog Covention

A couple of Sundays ago we reported that the first ever con for book bloggers, The Book Blogger Convention, will happen in New York on the 28th of May one day after the Book Expo America (May 25-27) and that Thea was going to attend both whilst Ana was going to stay home dying of envy.

Well folks, some things have changed and we have some further news to report! First of all, the BBC has affiliated with BEA and if you register for the former you are automatically registered to the latter. How great is that?

Second, there are going to be several interesting panels during the con like Professionalism/Ethics, Marketing, Author/Blogger Relationships, Building Community, Writing/Building Content, and Thea has been invited to be a panelist for the Marketing segment!

Finally, because she must be there to see this in person, Ana decided to throw caution to the wind and will be joining the hordes attenting both events! This will be grand, the second time ever the Smugglers get to meet in person. Needless to say, we are Super Excited.

So come on, join us! Registration for the con is still open and available for a discounted rate of $90 (until February 14). This includes your pass to BEA, so it’s quite a deal!

In Other News:

Locus Magazine in its February 2010 issue, published The 2009 Recommended Reading List with inputs from many professionals of Fantasy and Scifi genres. Amongst the listed, some of our own favorites such as the ubiquitous Ark by Stephen Baxter (which seems to be making most ‘top of’ lists); Drood by Dan Simmons, Liar by Justine Larbalestier and Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld. And of course, many, many others that we really want to read (what else is new?).

On that same vein (hee),The 2009 Stoker Awards Preliminary Ballot has been released. The Stoker Awards are held each year by the Horror Writers Association in celebration of the best of the genre has to offer. And we are stocked to see Carrie Ryan’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth and Kaaron Warren’s Slights making the list! The Forest of Hands and Teeth and Slights were two of Thea’s Top 10 reads from 2009. You can read her review for The Forest of Hands and Teeth HERE, and the review for Slights HERE. Also, you can check out our interview with Carrie Ryan, her Smugglivus Guest Post, as well as Kaaron Warren’s guest post about her favorite horror reads of 2009. Congratulations, Carrie and Kaaron!

As you might be aware, the last season of Lost premiered last week with an episode that was mind-blowing and which already sent us into full Theorising Mode. We probably exchanged a hundred emails after we watched the episode discussing the implications of everything that happened to the future of the show. If you are rolling your eyes right now, well, it seems you are not alone. We were shocked, we say SHOCKED, to find out last week, that we, as Lost fans, are officially considered….annoying, Oh, the HORROR, by the non-fans of the show. This, according to this video from The Onion. (Seriously now, THIS VIDEO IS AWESOME. We lurves it. Thanks to Willaful for the heads up).

Current Giveaways:

Don’t forget that our Soul Screamers giveaway is still going! You have until February 15th to enter for a chance to win either both and (first winner) or (two additional winners). You can enter it here.

This Week on The Book Smugglers

We kick start the week with a Lisa McMann special. Thea reviews Fade and Gone books 2 and 3 in the Wake Trilogy and we will have a massive giveaway to celebrate the release of Gone.

On Tuesday, it’s another very special day here at the Book Smugglers. Thea reviews A Dark Matter by Peter Straub, one of the masters of Horror and one of her favourite authors since she was a child. And we are supremely proud to announce that her review will be followed by an interview with the author!

On Wednesday, Ana reviews A Tale of Two Demon Slayers by Angie Fox, third in her Demon Slayer UF series.

Thursday sees Ana reviewing Lex Trent Versus The Gods the first YA offering by writer Alex Bell. The review will be followed by an interview with the author.

Finally on Friday, Thea reviews the Fantasy novel Except the Queen by Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder.

And that’s it from us today.

Enjoy your Sunday!

~ Your Friendly Neighborhood Book Smugglers

Welcome to yet another Guest Dare – the June edition. For those new to the feature, our Guest Dare is a monthly endeavor in which we invite an unsuspecting victim to read a book totally outside of their comfort zone.

This month’s victim – er, guest – is the fabulous Tia from Fantasy Debut. Tia revealed that her most dreaded genres were Horror and Paranormal Romance, and we gave her a tough selection of books to pick from. Finally, she settled on one of Thea’s personal favorites, the classic horror novel Ghost Story by Peter Straub.

Without further ado, we give the floor up to Tia!

—————

Title: Ghost Story

Author: Peter Straub

Genre: Horror

Publisher: Coward, McCann and Geoghegan
Publication Date: 1979
Paperback: 560 pages

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

Why did we RECOMMEND this book: It’s one of Thea’s nostalgic favorites (both the book and the film, starring Fred Astaire) – one of those books she read as a young teen that got her into the horror genre in the first place!

Summary: (from amazon.com)
In life, not every sin goes unpunished.

Peter Straub’s classic bestseller is a work of “superb horror” (The Washington Post Book World) that, like any good ghost story, stands the test of time — and conjures our darkest fears and nightmares.

TIA’S REVIEW:

Ana, Thea–forgive me. I have failed.

When Ana and Thea challenged me to this Dare, choosing a horror novel was an obvious choice. In all the time I’ve run Fantasy Debut, the only horror novel I covered was Calling Mr. Lonely Hearts by the awesome and incredibly sweet Laura Benedict. She’s so sweet, you wonder how she can write such about such awful things.

Anyway, Ana and Thea gave me a selection of titles to choose from.

Ghost Story by Peter Straub
The Damnation Game by Clive Barker
At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
Angels’ Blood by Nalini Singh

I probably should have selected the Lovecraft novel for its sheer brevity, but I’ve tried to read Lovecraft before. I much prefer the Cliff Note’s versions of his novels! The Barker and Singh novels put me off too much for various reasons. I selected Ghost Story because it seemed to be the most readable and–to be frank–the least repugnant (sorry!).

It starts with a twenty-plus page prologue. In the prologue, a guy named Wanderley has apparently kidnapped a little girl and is headed south. As they head south, you find that there is something strange about the little girl. Toward the end of the prologue, I wondered if she was even a little girl at all. My interest was piqued.

Then, I started chapter one. The narrative jumped back an unspecified period of time. Four old men, Ricky, Sears, Lewis and John meet on a regular basis, apparently to exchange ghost stories. This started after a fifth member of their society–Wanderley’s uncle–died last year. Turns out there’s a deeper reason they’re exchanging ghost stories. Turns out they were all involved in the death of a young woman years before.

They decide to bring Wanderley in under the dubious–or desperate–credentials that he’s a novelist. He might understand what they’re experiencing.

Part of the reason I don’t read horror is because very often, the protagonists are such unpleasant people that I feel no attachment to them. I didn’t care about any of the old men, and I figured that they probably all deserved their fates. It is a plot-driven story when I’m attracted to character-driven ones. I found the writing too opaque, with long descriptions of such things like what one of the old men experiences as he takes his daily run (he’s a fit old guy, and the youngest of them). And the ghost stories that they men were exchanging weren’t especially scary. At least, they had not gotten scary at the point where I stopped, about 120 pages in.

There was a bit of interest when a mysterious young woman appears on the scene. She is related to the murdered girl of years before, but ultimately it didn’t interest me enough to carry me through.

So, I took up the dare, but I failed. I can’t blame other books, because while the other books I’m reading are interesting, none of them are can’t-put-it-down kinds of books. Do I get points for trying? Will Ana and Thea even want to post this? I do feel bad about not finishing, but at this point, I would have been forcing myself to go on. I hate that. Since Ana and Thea have posted Did Not Finish reviews in the past, I decided to write one for them.

Straub is unquestionably a master writer. But unfortunately, I don’t have any interest in the types of novels he writes. The book is due back to the library tomorrow. My daughter spilled water on it, so they might make me buy it. If they do, I may finish it eventually, but it would probably be too eventual to be any use to Ana or Thea.

Rating: Did Not Finish
—————

Well, shucks. We feel awful that Tia didn’t end up finishing this novel, but we can of course understand where she’s coming from, and we thank her for the heroic effort!

Speaking of Dares, Tia had the gall to counter-Dare us to read one of her favorite novels, The Once and Future King by T.H. White! We’ll be over at her blog with our review of the first book in the series, “The Sword in the Stone,” so make sure to stop by.

Next Month on The Guest Dare: Liz from My Favourite Books is our next guest up on the Dare. Liz revealed that she would be interested in reading something in the SciFi category – and has selected Hyperion by Dan Simmons.

Until next time!