The Night Country
Ratings7
Average rating3.9
"At midnight on Halloween in a cloistered New England suburb, a car carrying five teenagers leaves a winding road and slams into a tree, killing three of them. One escapes unharmed, another suffers severe brain damage. A year later, summoned by the memories of those closest to them, the three who died come back on a last chilling mission among the living.".
"A strange and unsettling ghost story in the tradition of Ray Bradbury and Shirley Jackson. The Night Country creeps through the leaf-strewn streets and quiet cul-de-sacs of a bedroom community, reaching into the desperately connected yet isolated lives of three people changed forever by the accident: Tim, who survived intact but lost everything; Brooks, the cop whose guilty secret has destroyed his life, and Kyle's mom trying to love the new son the doctors returned to her. As the day wanes.
and darkness falls, one of them puts a terrible plan into effect, and they find themselves caught in a collision of need and desires, watched over by the knowing ghosts."--BOOK JACKET.
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A fascinatingly philosophical take on a ghost story.
The story is following the denizens of town approaching the one year anniversary of an accident that took the lives of 3 teenagers and left another permanently brain damaged. Only one survivor was largely unhurt. The accident happened during a police chase and the police officer involved has been left deeply affected as well. We follow the ghosts of the 3 who died, who are in turn following the people who were impacted by the crash. The subtext is that the ghosts who haunt you are largely made of your own mistakes, your own experiences. The trauma of the past is very much alive and the struggles to deal with the guilt is an especially strong theme.
This was a beautifully told story, deeply affecting in its subject matter. Losing children, friends or being the cause of an accident are deeply seated fears. Guilt is a powerful emotion. This is not a light read and the crushing sense of inevitability that is produced is fantastically powerful.
Mt first Stewart O'Nan book, but not my last. He writes a lot of sentances like me. It feels weird reading it, almost uncanny (but he is obviously better).
This book did suffer a bit from a lot of useless action described due to present tense, but! I enjoyed the ride. It could have been a novela, maybe. Not a lot of action happens here.
I did read SOMETHING WICKED a few years ago and loved that, so i think that elevated this book a bit too.
