sWitch

by Scott Norton

Barbara Ducharme's got a she's going to stitch her fraying family back together with a little help from... Satan . Mired in an homogeneous suburban hell where happiness is always one impulse purchase away, what's a housewife to do when her frozen marriage refuses to thaw, and her children's lives are falling apart before they've even had a chance to begin? A trip to a run-down, mountain home she's inherited from a mysterious relative sounds like an ideal way to break the routine, and break the news she's been dabbling in the dark side. Then they showed up--three masked assailants on their own little adventure filled with terror, torment and torture. Of course, there's no accounting for the toll years of family dysfunction has taken on their victims. For Barbara, the brutal assault may be just the thing to bring her twisted family together. For the intruders, it could be wrong family, wrong time. sWitch is a sophisticated, subversive romp that blends the sexy with the supernatural, knowing just when to turn up the humor and when to turn down the lights. So light a fire, lock your doors, and get ready to turn the tables on everything you've ever known about horror fiction.

314 pages, Paperback

First published September 13, 2010

About the author

After graduating from Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Communications with a BA in writing and a minor in English Literature, I entered the family business where I wrote a ton of industrial scripts and ad copy and accumulated a great deal of experience in video, film and multimedia production. I also learned a fair bit about the importance of an office with a locking door and a pair of windows that overlook a roof. Happiness is often a handy escape route.

Reviews

[Scott Norton]

This may come off as a bit cheeky, but I wrote this book so I've read it more times than I can count.

sWitch was my second novel, and if I had to do it again I would probably relax a little on the acrobatic prose and try not to be as jazzy and ambitious. Good authors are usually invisible to the reader, or "sat in a chair in the corner filing their nails". I would try to be more like that.

However, I do remain proud of this work and its campy, subversive tone. I especially liked the way I managed to crack open the psyches of the home invaders, hopefully without making them less frightening. Home invasion was a popular trope of the time and I wanted to zag where others were zigging. I think I pulled that much off.

My central intent was to show a family coming together in ways that careful society would instinctively oppose. Conservative family constructs always irked me with their emphasis on conformity and theater of the safe. Maybe I was trying to show how, instead of being afraid of our dark sides, we could come to process the balanced essence of one another to form deeper, more personalized bonds.

Mostly, I think I just wanted to have fun. I hope others who read it have just that.

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been lucky enough to be given a copy of sWitch by Scott Norton (thank you), the author himself (I also reviewed his novella HorrorCon not long ago), and seeing as I have been hanging to read this one I had to read it straight away didn’t I? Yes, I did.

See the thing is, it’s hard for me to find a decent dark fiction that is just enough humour and just enough dark, without being too overdramatic (sometimes they try too hard to be disturbing and it’s rather disappointing), for me to enjoy so it’s really nice when I come across a book that has all those elements presented in the synopsis alone. This is why I have been looking forward to reading sWitch.

For the rest of my review please check out my blog post.

[Yolise · Rating 5 out of 5]

sWitch is an incredibly original and beautifully-written novel that definitely redefines the concept of horror fiction. It takes an intensely average family and reveals what really goes on behind those twitching net curtains and turns the entire concept of "normality" and family life entirely on its head. The characters are wonderfully-realised and there is a masterful balance of dark humour and deep insight. The pacing is superb and every paragraph is finely crafted to set the mood and tempo.

This is a superb offering from a novelist destined to become a bestseller. I love this book!