The Girl Next Door
Ratings82
Average rating3.7
I've read splatterpunk and been less disturbed I think because it was based on a true story made it hard for me to stomach. It wasn't for me.
Excellently written, terrible to read. One of my quickest reads because I really needed it to end. Devastating and truly heartbreaking.
4⭐
La sensación de malestar que me dejó este libro me va a acompañar por un buen rato. Lo termine casi en un día, la historia te atrapa y de verdad te llenas de ira con lo que sucede, esa mentalidad de manada y encima representada con niños es algo terrorífico.
I was probably “done” by the midpoint based solely on this horrific story, but I managed to read the whole thing in the end. A tough read by all measures. I do like horror, and this made my hair stand on end til the end. The subject matter is just...awful. I will never forget it.
Had an interest in reading some pulp horror and saw that Ketchum is one of the more well regarded writers in the genre. This novel was based on a true crime in which a woman tortured a teenage girl who was in her care and encouraged the neighborhood children to take part. I don't think this was a story that was worth telling, at least not in novel form. There were some thought provoking themes, like the exploration of the ways in which objectification of women leads to dehumanization and violence, but ultimately this was too lurid for me and not close enough to the real life events for me to feel like i learned much about what actually happened. As far as pulp horror goes I preferred The Cellar which was about a bunch of weird sex monsters and was too stupid for me to take seriously. This was just disturbing and not worthwhile.
I don't think ive ever read a book that made me physically nauseous. The air around me felt tense and I had to stop to take a deep breath at one point, I wish I was exaggerating.
I've read quite a bit of extreme horror, just gore for the sake of gore, but this was so horrifying because it was so realistic. Based off of a true case. The 50s setting was so perfect, and the author takes time to really humanise the victims.
The pov worked really well too, because this is being narrated by the boy next door to where the abuse was happening, and how he perceives everything as an impressionable teenager himself. There is also narration from him as an adult which was painful, but insightful. You really get to see what it's like to be witnessing something like this.
This book is not easy to get through, yet i couldn't stop myself from flipping the pages. So brilliant for what it set out to do.
Every word. Every vision. Every realistic scenery crumbled into me. Shattered its pieces in my mind.
Ketchum's idea with his fascinating choice of words and their American flavor (slangs, new age words, etc) caught my eye from the first beginning. The transgression beyond the borders of humanity is something that didn't occur in this book out of the blue. It was a gradual opening of the other side. The side of abjection, slowly pulling the band-aid and thus you'll see a glittering violence. I'm a great fan of true crime, shock horror, and even more to the extent of transgressive fiction. Experiencing this book was even more realistic to me, than reading the case of Junko Furuta online. The way the unreliable -mostly pain in the ass - narrator went through the features of American issues in a deep deep path. Misogyny, extreme traditionalism and family structure was being gazed at, with a sense of innocence and honesty, and sometimes, stupidity, from the lenses of a 12 year-old child. A child raising this question that how you would act when the criminal is under-age. When children do something beyond question. When misogyny exists in the hands of a victim of misogyny. As a middle-eastern girl here reading Jack Ketchum, I felt Meg. A girl living in Eastern part of a country miles away from me. Though with two different ages, cultures and lives. I felt her as a victim, and a girl. With all my being.I never been to America. Never had the chance to learn about the nuances of living in each state. However, I know ketchum portrayed the images of livinvg in a small town in eastern US. The problems, the conventions, all the good and bads without pretentiousness. I heard before that living in these kinds of small towns in some states are even not safe sometimes. But they were the narratives of migrants, feeling the heartbeat of a young American girl, as If I live there myself, depicts that how Ketchum was good with writing this shit! As a middle-eastern girl I felt like I'm dealing with these issues myself, in a nowhere shitland in America. I felt like how brave you must be to vividly showcase the details of problematic life-styles in U.S.A. A country these days with too much contradictions, regarding the issues Ketchum pointed fingers to.
Horror was not something driven from the outside world. This kind of horror fiction started having a form in America, with Allan Poe's petrifying Telltale Heart. Another story shading from the fears of a normal man (a psychopath though) who is becoming something the norms hate. Published in a time when horror was a taboo and got censored several times in Christian schools, Telltale heart was not happening on the outside. It was inside us. It was the deepest fears of a fearsome mad killer. We don't know how much we might bypass the boundaries until a source of power stops us, or well... Encourages us. The Girl Next Door is a story of abjection with its true form. The true domino of violence, a victim in her teens, allowing the products of her victim era to make another victim deeply rotten. The cycle goes on, until it's too late. The most captivating word for me was when the police realized about everything and entered, when it was too late. He told that incel narrator “Were you the kept or the keeper”
And when the narrator said he wasn't involved, the police answered “But you didn't help her either”
It needs not only talent but a pure bravery to write such a narrator in a place full of filth and misogyny. It takes risks to write about an indecisive, passive observer of violence who is dealing with the problem every damn time. It gives us the question about observers of violence in today's world. Is it the pleasure of being accepted by the system of power that makes them silent, a mere cowardice? Or is it more complicated than that.
Rest In Peace. Jack Ketchum
There were a few times the author would refuse to tell us about the torture and abuse that this girl had to endure. I cant help but think “why not do that again and again? what's the point of us looking at these scenes when sometimes you hide other scenes?”
There is something captivating about Ketchums writing. The atmosphere of town and the setting was enjoyable and played a large part of why I kept reading.
Finding out this was based on a real case? That's abhorrent. Disgusting. That thought should have been kept private this book does a dishonor. This book is not really scary, it's not really horror. This book was about voyeurism. About bearing witness to crime and abuse and doing nothing. I could see that this was supposed to be the point.
What ends up happening is this circus of abuse. I don't doubt abuse like the scenes described in the novel have happened. What I am saying is that this author makes a circus of it. A spectacle. Our protagonist is a young boy, a child himself. His view and understanding of the abuse he witnesses is ever shifting as he learns from the adults around him, but the narrative isn't strong enough to hold a character like this.
There are lines where I can see this struggle very clear. An intention just barely missed. I don't think authors are allowed grace about intentions when they are using a real life case of murder and torture as inspiration. In terms of what I think this book has done to audiences I'd say it's fucked up wanna be horror Collen Hoover with 10x better writing but just as bad execution of ideas.
This was my first book by this author, and while enjoyed his style everything was just a confusing tangle.
Usually, I would only rate a book this high if I could see myself reading it again. I can't see myself ever picking this book up again, but I couldn't rate it any lower. There's something darkly touching and hauntingly wise about this story and what it says about the capacities that humanity has to love and hate, to hurt and forgive and to endure.
This book pulled me in and tore me down bit by bit until I was an aching, sobbing, angry mess at the end. The images painted on these pages will haunt me for a long time. I can't, in good conscience, recommend this to anyone who wants to have a peaceful night's rest.
I finished reading this yesterday and it still makes me wanna cry whenever I think about it. It's based on a true story and my heart breaks for the real victim that endured all of the pain.
Wow, where do I begin? I'm kind of mad at myself for not reading this sooner. This is a disturbing book. I can't even begin to get my thoughts down about this one. Haunting, terrifying and sad. The pacing of the story was perfect. Ketchum writes so well, I'm officially hooked to read more of his work. I will write more of a review once I process the story a bit more and let it sit with me.
“I am not going to tell you about this.... I refuse.There are things you know that you will die before telling, things you know you should have died before ever having seen.I watched and I saw”.
The most disturbing thing I have ever read.
i don't really know how to rate this. it's one of the saddest and most disturbing books i've ever read. it was well written, well researched and had fleshed out characters, but i can't say i enjoyed it or would recommend it because of the subject matter, especially because it's based on a true story. so yeah.
The subject matter is not what caused my low rating, it was just the writing style. I didn't find it particularly well written.
God, this book is disturbing on a whole new level. I'm giving it 4 stars because it's well written and definitely draws you in, but before diving in I would recommend reading some trigger warnings.
God, this book is disturbing on a whole new level. I'm giving it 4 stars because it's well written and definitely draws you in, but before diving in I would recommend reading some trigger warnings.
**2023 update: upping this to 5 stars because I STILL think about it.
This is a painful, awful, brilliant examination of cruelty and evil. It is based on the real case of sixteen-year old Sylvia Likens, a girl who was abused by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski. Gertrude not only abused her, but manipulated her own children and other children in the neighborhood to join in with her. This is a book that could so easily have been trashy exploitation of a terrible crime committed against a little girl. Yet, for reasons that I have trouble putting into words, it never feels that way. Reading this felt like when I read “Night” or “This Way For The Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen.” It becomes so awful that it must be hyperbolic, but the truth is that it is not. Unlike those two stories, this does not tout itself as non-fiction. Names are changed, as are certain events (in a sickening twist, this book actually tones down some of the things that happened in the real case), in order to provide distance and leave room for Ketchum to write without trampling all over the memory of Likens.
This is a hard book to read, and it is absolutely one that you could go the rest of your life without having to experience. However, if anything that I have just written intrigues you, it is worth your time.
This was a very hard book to get through, just because it made me so angry. I kept wanting to scream at the main character “WHY DON'T YOU JUST GO TELL THE COPS?” Even though he did end up trying to help her, it was too little, too late. And I just think that the cops showing up so soon AFTER Meg dies was just too, I dunno, convenient? to the story. Come on, they could've gotten there a little earlier, while she was alive. As far as Ruth, she's crazy evil and I think she got just what she deserved. All in all, the book did hold my interest, even if it did make me angry (just like the real crime that this is based on made me angry.)
I finished this book today and While I loved the character development and the story build up The story itself is disturbing and truly disgusting. And to think it is based on true events, God I really do not want to know what parts are real. I finished the book and watched the movie. The detail that was left out of the movie allowed me to be able to actually watch the movie.
I think the reason this story sits so badly with me is because it is about children. I just can not wrap my mind around the events in this book.
I do not like the story line. This is not the type of horror I want to read about. I am shaken by this story in all the wrong ways. It will be a while before I ever think about picking up another book from Jack Ketchum....
This book is absolutely horrifying in terms of its graphic depictions of severe child abuse. While it's well written and makes its point, I wouldn't feel comfortable recommending it to anyone.
Shocking tale of violence and abuse. It could (and is) happening right to the girl next door. That's what makes it shocking.