(pb; 1981)
From the back cover
“After a bizarre and
disturbing incident at the funeral of matriarch Marian Savage, the McCray and
Savage families look forward to a restful and relaxing summer at Beldame, on Alabama’s
Gulf Coast, where three Victorian houses rise above the shimmering beach. Two
of the houses are habitable, while the third is slowly and mysteriously being
buried beneath an enormous dune of blindingly white sand. But though long
uninhabited, the third house is not empty. Inside, something deadly lies in
wait. Something that has terrified Dauphin Savage and Luker McCray since they
were boys, and which still haunts their nightmares. Something horrific that may
be responsible for several and unexplained deaths earlier—and now is ready to
kill again.”
Review
Elementals is a masterful, immediately immersive novel, one whose pacing, thick-with-thematic-atmosphere and striking, sometimes fun characters makes it stand out in the best way possible in a genre glutted with less-than-stellar/standard spookhouse works. (It’s a thin line between lag-time writing in serious need of editing and well-foreshadowed/low-key events and chills, and McDowell’s best work falls on the side of the latter approach).
If it ends in a non-surprising, quiet way—it has character-based twists, so I wouldn’t call it predictable—it’s because I got to know the characters and locations well enough to get a sense of their personalities. This is one of my all-time favorite spookhouse reads, one worth owning and keeping beyond its initial reading.
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