lost boy lost girl
Peter Straub
Random House
304 pp.
At first glance, there wouldn’t seem to be much point in writing a review of lost boy lost girl, the new novel by Peter Straub. Why? Well, take a look at this portion of the jacket description:
… beautiful, troubled fifteen-year-old Mark Underhill … vanishes from the face of the earth. To his uncle, horror novelist Timothy Underhill, Mark’s inexplicable absence feels like a second death … Tim searches his hometown of Millhaven for clues that might help him unravel this mystery of death and disappearance. He soon learns that a pedophilic murderer is on the loose in the vicinity, and that shortly before his mother’s suicide Mark had become obsessed with an abandoned house where he imagined the killer might have taken refuge. No mere empty building, the house on Michigan Street whispers from attic to basement with the echoes of a long-hidden true-life horror story …
Then take a look at another, this one from Black House, a collaboration between Straub and Stephen King:
When a series of gruesome murders occur in western Wisconsin that are reminiscent of those committed several decades ago by a madman named Albert Fish, the killer is dubbed "the Fisherman" … But these new killings merely the work of a disturbed individual, or has a mysterious and malignant force been unleashed in this quiet town … Jack is drawn back to the Territories and to his own hidden past, where he may find the soul-strength to enter a terrifying house at the end of a deserted tract of forest …
On the surface the books have striking similarities: serial killer on the loose, kidnapped boy, strange house that is more than what it seems. A colleague was quick to suggest that maybe lost boy lost girl (Straub’s first novel since B.H.) might in fact be Black House minus what King brought to the table.
Regardless, I’ve tried to look at lost boy lost girl as a separate entity, and you should too, because it is a book worth checking out.
Straub has been known as a much more artsy genre writer — not so much pretentious as he is particular about the language — and in a field with a reputation for pumping out a lot of crap, he’s a welcome breath of fresh air.
Speaking of fresh air, I should begin by saying that lost boy lost girl is that it’s a novel about atmosphere — and not just in the writerly sense of the word.
Tim Underhill, horror author and reluctant investigator, travels to his hometown to investigate the disappearance of his nephew, Mark. Greeted by his less-than-impressed brother, Phillip, Tim quickly realizes that it’s up to him to find out what happened.
As it was mentioned above, there’s a serial killer on the loose, and before he disappeared, Mark became obsessed with a house which he believed was connected to the murders.
The characterization of Tim and Mark and the bond they share is the book’s greatest strength. A successful novelist and a would-be skaterpunk, the two are polar opposites of society, and yet they never seem phony or unbelievable. At one point, Tim pointedly refers to his brother’s jealous, and suggests that he might even have something to be jealous of. Tim feels like a real character — no apologies.
The book’s only failing, at least to me, is the story structure. lost boy lost girl doesn’t feel quite like a novel; instead it presents itself in a series of beautiful and horrible flashes, like vignettes of some strange impressionist film. It’s not a new style, but it’s not one commonly used, and it takes a little while to get used to.
Although the book is certainly stuck in the shadow of Black House, lost boy lost girl is by no means the same book or a variation on said book; it’s an examinatio
n of horror and home — the horror of being at home, the horror of coming home, and the horror that drive us from h ome.
Not for all tastes, but definitely worth a look.
Ian