Eutopia: A Novel of Terrible Optimism by David Nickle
My rating: 5/5 cats
like deliverance…with monsters!
CZP is three for three!!
i love this book. i always ask people to recommend me some good horror books because i just can’t get scared by books, and i want to feel that lovely shivery feeling of “what’s that noise!!??” “what is that shadow doing?? ahhhhhh!!” and while it’s true i slept fine after reading this – i wasn’t cowering in my bed with the blankets pulled up over my face for protection, there were several scenes where i felt my skin crawling, and i actually leaned forward into the book, the way you would if you were psyching yourself up to poke a sleeping lion with a broomstick.
this man knows how to write creepy and atmospheric scenes. they are great.this is a very literary horror novel, but it still fulfills its role of being effective in its horror-mode, i would not call it cerebral horror, like in a henry james manner, which is intense and foreboding; he is in-the-head-intense, whereas this is the good primeval gut-fear i crave.
it is hard to talk about the plot of this one – i was telling dana about how much i was enjoying it on the subway home last week and i was getting more and more animated, with my hands flailing and saying “and then this and then that and oh! then this and but then” and her eyes just sort of glazed over while she thought about college basketball and M/M fiction… and that’s fine – this is definitely not the book for her, and i probably overcomplicated the plot in my excitement. but if you like a narrative that unspools slowly and has great characterization and creepy undertones and then explodes into a scene of ensemble horror in a very traditional or classic way… does this make sense?? because the ending, or the climax anyway, seems like a callback to really great traditional horror or sci-fi films of a certain era. so it is familiar in a way, but not exhausted. it is like the way i can watch certain twilight zone or x-files episodes a million times and still get excited by them.
this begins as a historical piece: 1911; a black doctor experiences a lynching attempt by the KKK during which something very odd and spooky occurs. meanwhile, a young boy outlives everyone in his town, seemingly immune to the plague that has killed everyone else.
dun dun dun….
but then it spirals out to include a million different things: eugenics (hence the clever title), an amazing collection of hill-people, some really gross breeding and birthing situations… i just loved it.
this was his first book with CZP:
i love this cover and even though i have never read it because i still feel like i am not a fan of short stories even with the written review-proof that i frequently am, i always have it on the table at work because it is eye-catching and for some reason customers like to hold it up over their face as if it was a mask. and they always think they are being very original, like when they, separated from their friends or mate, yell “marco!!” sigh.
but – great story about this book that was told to me by brett, the co-publisher from CZP: apparently, a friend of his was reading it at LAX, and so many people complained to airport security that the cover was “disturbing them”, that they made him put it away. hahhaah love it!! book cover – you are a winner!! this book and snow globes are not allowed onboard!!
i feel i have strayed from the matter at hand.
this book = very good.
it will be out in may.
write it down so you don’t forget.
