Book Review: The Twilight Pariah
Happy New Year! For my first post of 2020, I want to review Jeffrey Ford's The Twilight Pariah. I've been wanting to check Ford out for a while and finally go around to picking Pariah up from the library a couple of weeks ago. I must say, this is a terrific book, and I can't wait to check out his other work.
The story starts with high school friends Maggie, Russell, and Henry meeting up at the beginning of the summer before their senior year of college. Maggie has recently switched her major to archeology and gets the bright idea that they should excavate some ruins of a local abandoned mansion for practice. When they find the skeleton of a baby in the remains of the mansion's old outhouse, things take a turn for the sinister. Because this isn't any normal baby skeleton. This baby has horns, a ridged spine, and a tail. Soon, the friends find that something is stalking them, and people close to them begin to die in gruesome ways. It's all somehow connected to the baby, and along with Russell's boyfriend and one of Maggie's professors, they set out to get to the bottom of the mystery and stop the murders.
The first great thing about Pariah are the characters. Even though it was a short book, I still felt like the characters were well developed. Their friendship was believable and the group dynamics relatable. Russell was my particular favorite. I liked his relationship with his boyfriend, Luther. You can tell how much they care about each other. There's also an old woman named Marlby, which is now totally what I'm going to name my purely hypothetical future daughter.
Another thing I love about this book is (SPOILER ALERT) the reveal of the creature's backstory. The idea of a being created out of a trauma is interesting, the idea that one event can echo through the ages, harming people otherwise untouched by the trauma itself. Or as Henry puts it:
The story starts with high school friends Maggie, Russell, and Henry meeting up at the beginning of the summer before their senior year of college. Maggie has recently switched her major to archeology and gets the bright idea that they should excavate some ruins of a local abandoned mansion for practice. When they find the skeleton of a baby in the remains of the mansion's old outhouse, things take a turn for the sinister. Because this isn't any normal baby skeleton. This baby has horns, a ridged spine, and a tail. Soon, the friends find that something is stalking them, and people close to them begin to die in gruesome ways. It's all somehow connected to the baby, and along with Russell's boyfriend and one of Maggie's professors, they set out to get to the bottom of the mystery and stop the murders.
The first great thing about Pariah are the characters. Even though it was a short book, I still felt like the characters were well developed. Their friendship was believable and the group dynamics relatable. Russell was my particular favorite. I liked his relationship with his boyfriend, Luther. You can tell how much they care about each other. There's also an old woman named Marlby, which is now totally what I'm going to name my purely hypothetical future daughter.
Another thing I love about this book is (SPOILER ALERT) the reveal of the creature's backstory. The idea of a being created out of a trauma is interesting, the idea that one event can echo through the ages, harming people otherwise untouched by the trauma itself. Or as Henry puts it:
What strikes me about this whole thing… [the event] has echoed through
time to affect the present. That bad karma radiated out to infect
everything around it.
As someone who suffers from PTSD, I can attest that this is a unique and appropriate analogy for the ripple effects of trauma.
I also really liked how the creature was sympathetic. It was doing these horrible things, but at the end of the day, it was ultimately a mother searching for its child. It actually broke my heart a little bit.
My only real complaint, and it's a small one, is that Henry falls asleep or zones out a lot. It happens enough times that it's really noticeable, to the point where I thought it was going to play a larger part in the story than it ever did. Otherwise, this was an exciting, quick read. Even though it was very short, Pariah had more depth and emotion that I've seen in many much longer novels, and I highly recommend it.
Warning: There is a briefly mentioned dog death in this one. Also, (SPOILER ALERT), the trauma at the heart of the story involves animal abuse. It's not graphic, but it really hurt my heart, so I want to caution other animal lovers that this may not be for them. And if you still want to read it, just be prepared.
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