Stunts

by Charles L. Grant

A fantasy story by the author of "Shadows", "Greystone Bay", "The Nestling" and "The Long Night of the Grave". Charles L. Grant is a three-times winner of the World Fantasy Award. He has also received two Nebula Awards and the British Fantasy Society's Life Achievement Award.

As Brian Oakland and his friends prepare to perform their various "stunts" on Halloween, a man, twisted by years of isolation, sits in one of the houses in their neighborhood, contemplating revenge.

Genres: Horror, Fiction

438 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Charles Lewis Grant was a novelist and short story writer specializing in what he called "dark fantasy" and "quiet horror." He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felicia Andrews, and Deborah Lewis.

Grant won a World Fantasy Award for his novella collection Nightmare Seasons, a Nebula Award in 1976 for his short story "A Crowd of Shadows", and another Nebula Award in 1978 for his novella "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye," the latter telling of an actor's dilemma in a post-literate future. Grant also edited the award winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991. Contributors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem. Grant was a former Executive Secretary and Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and president of the Horror Writers Association.

Reviews

[David B]

Expatriate American teacher Evan Kendal and British doctor Addie Burwin find themselves involved and on the run from Addie's husband Paul, who has apparently been touched by some kind of evil that causes both physical and mental decay, as well as giving him the power to cause catastrophes. Back in Evan's hometown, something similar seems to have happened to Evan's uncle. All of this is presented effectively, which is what makes the conclusion such a disappointment. All of the various plot threads come together, but it all feels very arbitrary and sketchy. The final explanation for the supernatural goings-on is vague. Also, Mr. Grant does not write teenagers well; the grammar, vocabulary, and references in their conversation makes them all sound like people in their forties.

[Michael]

This is only the second novel I've read by Charles L. Grant, and I was greatly disappointed. "The Pet" was a favorite of mine years ago, so I was looking forward to the same experience. I found "Stunts" to be littered with too many characters and a narrative that seemed to meander without any clear direction. There were a few scenes where Grant amped up the suspense, but the ending was too ambiguous, leaving me with a WTF kind of feeling. Grant's bibliography is expansive and with this being only my second foray into his realm, I'll likely give him another shot in the future.

[Kimberly]

Review Pending.

[Thomas]

Despite the evidence presented in my last five reviews, I'm not really on a 1980s horror kick. Yes, I'm making my way through Charles L. Grant's works, but that's a side project to my other reading. Now that I've finished up my Unfinished Series project, I pick my next read randomly from a spreadsheet; Necroscope and Stunts were pulled out using a random number generator, and it's just happenstance that they happened to be of the same genre. (Though, now that I think back on what I've been reading, maybe there's something more sinister behind these "random" selections . . . ?)

Anyway, Stunts is an odd novel namely because there are two distinct stories here which are only tangentially related. One of the stories is described on the back of the book -- teenagers in a New England town want to pull pranks around Halloween. That's also the relevance of the title (they're called "stunts", not pranks), which makes it even odder that this part of the novel doesn't even begin until past page 100. Up until that point, I was convinced I was reading a different book that had somehow had the wrong cover attached at the printer, since it was focused on an American professor in England trying to figure out what's going on with his friend, who appears to be causing murders all over the town. After the next 100 pages or so, the story begins flip-flopping between the two stories, and. . .

Honestly, I'm not sure what's going on with the two different stories. They don't really go together at all. Grant had a habit of publishing books which were collections of four novellas that were somewhat related, and I wonder if Stunts was his attempt to take two diverse stories and try to make a complete story out of them. I can't really say he succeeded; they reminded me a bit of the two stories taking place in House of Leaves, especially when one of the two stories (the one about the stunts) wound up being far more interesting than the other. By the end of the story, he forces them together, and they just don't feel like they belong.

Also missing from this novel was Grant's atmosphere, which has lent so much to his previous stories. The story reads more like a traditional novel, and had more of a plot and pacing than his previous books have had, but it seems like he sacrificed what made him a distinctive writer in order to pull that off. It's weird, because I found myself liking the more traditional style even as I missed Grant's quiet horror. And even then, the story wasn't "loud" horror; it just didn't have that same level of eeriness and otherworldliness that defined his earlier work.

It was also a bit disconcerting to read a Grant book that wasn't set in Oxrun Station, since I've read all of those back-to-back. Whenever Grant jumped back to New England, I expected to read something about the library, or one of the Stocktons, or Williamston Pike, and it was always a little jarring to realize that I was somewhere new. This isn't a fault of the novel, really, since it had more to do with my reading habits than anything else, but I had gotten so accustomed to Oxrun Station that I kept expecting to find those references.

Now that I think about it, though, I wonder if the non-Oxrun Station books are intended to be a different style all together. I jumped ahead through Grant's chronology to finish out the Oxrun Station books, and so far that's all I've read of his entire body of work. Stunts was the first book outside of that series I read, so I don't know how his earlier non-Oxrun Station books compare. Now that I'm finished with those and moving on to his other earlier books, I should be able to make a better comparison.

I'm not sure if I would recommend this novel, even to folks who are fans of Grant. Not only is his style missing, but the book is also missing a strong conclusion. In his previous books, where the feel of the novel was more important than the story, it didn't matter that much, but here Grant pushes the plot to the forefront while missing out on bringing it to a close. I enjoyed reading it, but I'm not sure that I liked where it went in the end. In fact, by the time the story ended, it would have just been getting started in a more traditional, plot-driven story. Grant's open-ended conclusions from previous books just don't work in this case.

[Bookworm of the Damned]

This was my first time reading Grant, and it will be my last. It seems like the author had two completely different ideas for two books, and he tried to combine them into one story. This resulted in a botched job with a forced ending that was way too open for my liking, especially since a good hundred pages or more of this work said a lot, without saying anything at all.

[Stephen McQuiggan]

American abroad Evan finds himself falling for his colleague Paul's wife Addie; Paul is upset, as you may well expect, but he's also cursed too, which you probably wouldn't. People tend to die in Paul's vicinity, so the lovebirds flee to Evan's hometown only to discover that his Uncle is cursed too, and that the local high school Halloween stunts are a bout to kick off with a bang. This is a nihilistic novel, in a sense, refreshingly unafraid to kill off its moral heartbeat - and the meetings between Evan and the deteriorating Paul are an undoubted highlight. I also enjoyed the author's belief that the emergency services in Britain are so efficient - the ambulances arrive, time after time, almost before the disaster; well, it is fiction, I suppose.

[Stephen Ormsby]

I am surprised i actually finished this in the end, as i did not care for any of the characters, found the writing style strange and at times odd. The title ‘Stunts’ barely figures as part of the plot, and when it does it has absolutely no bearing to the end. Talking of the end, it was thin and reached no real conclusion.

All in all, not a good book.

[Cassandra Glissadevil]

3.0 stars
A weak novel by a great author. I dig what Grant tried to do, but it comes off has a wonky Frankenstein splice, mash-up of two novelettes. Swing and a miss. For Charles L. Grant collectors only.

[David Bonesteel]

Expatriate American teacher Evan Kendal and British doctor Addie Burwin find themselves involved and on the run from Addie's husband Paul, who has apparently been touched by some kind of evil that causes both physical and mental decay, as well as giving him the power to cause catastrophes. Back in Evan's hometown, something similar seems to have happened to Evan's uncle. All of this is presented effectively, which is what makes the conclusion such a disappointment. All of the various plot threads come together, but it all feels very arbitrary and sketchy. The final explanation for the supernatural goings-on is vague. Also, Mr. Grant does not write teenagers well; the grammar, vocabulary, and references in their conversation makes them all sound like people in their forties.

[Dean]

My first Charles L. Grant novel. The synopsis is a bit misleading and the structure made it feel like two novels in one, but overall the story was interesting, the characters engaging, and the writing top notch. I don't recommend it as an introduction to Grant's work, but I definitely recommend it. A good read, but save it for later if your new to Grant.

[Leah]

I stopped reading Stunts on page 161. My blog post explains why. And as of February 27, 2012 I haven't checked it out again.