Alex James's Blog: AlexJamesNovels Blog - Posts Tagged "haunted-house"

Marsten House represents a childhood horror for writer Ben Mears, and he returns to Salem’s Lot to put that horror to rest. Ben doesn’t expect to fall in love with Susan or make friends with teacher Matt, but he is still seen as an outsider and not to be trusted. When a few disappearances occur, it’s natural that the village folk see Ben as the one responsible and he is promptly questioned. It doesn’t help that the subject of his latest story ties him in with the infamous Marsten House.

Purportedly a haunted house story based on Dracula and flesh-eating vampires, Salem’s Lot delivers with an eerie setting and a chilling atmosphere in the first few chapters, with creepy dialogue. There was a lot of planning and research in evidence – an apt background to the unexplained mysteries and horrors of the Marsten House. Stephen King delivered with the right pace, slowing down to add character background or speeding up events to the inevitable discovery … a discovery which the reader suspects but the characters can only fear the supernatural. I thought this part of the narrative was artfully done.

From chapter three it became clear to me that Stephen King likes to delve deeply into the lives and histories of numerous characters. (Salem’s Lot is the first Stephen King book read, so this is new to me.) There were sinister plans in action concerning the renovation of Marsten House, but I did struggle to remember the character names and the respective facts about them, and so could not enjoy Salem’s Lot to the maximum.

SPOILER: I did think the focus of the story switched in a way I was less comfortable with; I wanted to learn about Marsten House and uncover secrets that could link it with vampires but it ended up being more about the latter.

When the focus returned to Ben Mears and the story sped up, I read with relish. The writing had suspense and didn’t need to work hard for my attention. I finished Salem’s Lot not with ‘Ah, isn’t that nice’, but with an equally satisfying ‘I’ve been through some ordeal, and I want to go through it again’.

Bag of Bones is a complex unravelling of the present and past of the ‘TR’ village. There is much more than there appears to be behind the fabric of everyday village life – ghosts of the past that connect with present unspeakable actions. It can be difficult to know who is friend and foe, which invisible forces are at work and what they want. Between the main characters there is a psychic connection, but sometimes what moves us is deeper than the human mind can comprehend, even the mind of a writer ...

There was much to interest me throughout, which is mainly about Mike Noonan going back and forth between his home and Mattie Devore’s to help her with her child custody case. As you can imagine, the other villagers have noticed his interest in her and assume he just wants to take advantage of her young body, like every middle-aged man with his tongue lolling out, which was described something to that effect in the book. Mike asserts that his real purpose is to help her against her tyrant father-in-law, rich billionaire Max Devore, and the villagers’ cynicism towards him convinces Mike they are being bribed by Max Devore.

When he’s not trying to seduce Mattie Devore, he’s in his home Sara Laughs writing his new story. His writer’s block has vanished since his wife died. The child custody case, strange noises in his house, and rearranging fridge magnets, inspire him to write a murder story. Unfortunately the ghosts that live with him do not rest, and he becomes convinced the villagers are hiding something about the past that has some relevance to Mattie Devore and her daughter Kyra. It also has relevance to Mike’s deceased wife and the child they were denied.