Immobility by Brian Evenson

(hb; 2012)

From the inside flap:

"When you open your eyes things already seem to be happening without you. You don't know who you are and you don't remember where you've been. You know the world has changed, that a catastrophe has destroyed what used to exist before, but you can't remember exactly what did exist before. And you're paralyzed from the waist down apparently, but you don't remember that either.

"A man claiming to be your friend tells you your services are required. Something crucial has been stolen, but what he tells you about it doesn't quite add up. You've got to get it back or something bad is going to happen. And you've got to get it back fast, so they can freeze you again before your own time runs out.

"Before you know it, you're being carried through a ruined landscape on the backs of two men in hazard suits who don't seem anything like you at all, heading toward something you don't understand that may well end up being the death of you.

"Welcome to the life of Josef Horkai."

Review:

Immobility is a well-written, mainstream science fiction novel with its stark themes of religious faith and the catastrophic evils that result from those violent myopic "moralities". Immobility is better than Evenson's The Open Curtain, with its taut, highly visual writing, as well as a worthwhile plot twist. Good read, this: worth owning for fans of the early works of Stephen King and Dean Koontz.

The Open Curtain by Brian Evenson

(pb; 2006)

From the back cover:

When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school project, he runs across a series of articles from the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young. Delving deeply into the Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice used in the murders, Rudd, along with his newly discovered half-brother, Lael, becomes swept up in the psychol"When Rudd, a troubled teenager, embarks on a school project, he runs across a series of articles from the 1902 New York Times chronicling a vicious murder committed by the grandson of Brigham Young. Delving deeply into the Mormon ritual of blood sacrifice used in the murders, Rudd, along with his newly discovered half-brother, Lael, becomes swept up in the psychological and atavistic effects of this violent, antique ritual.

"As the past and the present become an increasingly tangled knot, Rudd is found at the scene of a multiple murder at a remote campsite with minor injuries and few memories. Lyndi, the daughter of the victims, tries to help Rudd recover his memory and, together, they find a strength unique to survivors of terrible tragedies. But Rudd, desperate to protect Lyndi and unable to let the past be still, tries to manipulate their Mormon wedding ceremony to trick the priests (and God) by giving himself and Lyndi new secret names—names that match the killer and the victim in the one hundred-year-old murder. The nightmare has just begun."

 

 

Review:

Open is a slow-build, mostly well-edited psychological horror novel that is more suggestive than gory, steeped in Mormon history -- a history that most Mormons would deny or uncomfortably skim over. But not Rudd, whose dark investigations take a more modern, obsessive turn.

I write "mostly well-edited" because Open builds too slowly: some scenes could have been edited out, without creating a plot-hiccup in the largely predictable storyline, which dissolves into an overused haze of dream-twisty madness. The fact that Open is predictable is not a criticism -- Evenson is well aware of its predictability -- but the journey, for the most part, is interesting in its creeping-in, ritual-born insanity.

This is an overall-solid read from an author of talent and mainstream-ish leanings. If you like Dean Koontz or Stephen King's early writing style, you may like Evenson's Open as well.