Reborn by F. Paul Wilson

 

(pb; 1990, revised in 2005: second book in the Nightworld Cycle, aka the Adversary Cycle.)

 

From the back cover

“When an ancient artifact dissolves in the hands of a man calling himself Mr. Veilleur, he knows something has gone wrong. . . terribly, cosmically wrong.

“Dr. Roderick Hanley, a Novel Prize-winning geneticist, dies in a plane crash. His last words: ‘The boy! They’ll find out about the boy! He’ll find out about himself!’ When Jim Stevens, an orphan and struggling writer, learns that he is the sole heir to the Hanley estate, he is sure he has at last found his biological father.

“He’s only half right. The true nature of his inheritance—and the truth about his conception—will crush him. In New York City, a group of charismatics has been drawn together with a sense of great purpose. Satan is coming, and they have been chosen to fight him.

“Mr. Veilleur has been drawn to the group as well, but he realizes it’s not Satan who is coming. Stan would be a suitable au pair compared to the ancient evil that is in the process of being. . . Reborn.”

 

Review

Reborn didn’t thrill me as much as its prequel, The Keep. A big reason for this might be Keep’s setting—I love WWII-era horror novels that waste no time jumping into character-centric action, something Reborn is not. (Please note that I'm not condemning any choices that Wilson might've made with Reborn; I'm merely stating a personal leaning.)

Reborn is a different type of novel. Set in stateside 1968, it mostly focuses on Jim and Carol Stevens, husband and wife, and what happens when Jim—a temperamental, struggling horror writer with mysterious parentage—inherits a fortune from a man he’s never met (Dr. Robert Hanley). In addition to the fortune, though, there are terrible secrets, secrets which may have something to do with the struggle between Rasalom and Glaeken (possibly now going by the name Gaston Veilleur) in Keep.

Reborn, with its relatively slow, steady setup (as well as more characters), is an above average, sometimes clever read from a great writer. When it comes together at the end, it generally delivers, but ultimately, it—like the rest of Reborn—feels like a setup for larger story that does not come about in this book. Fans of Ira Levin’s 1967 novel Rosemary’s Baby (and Roman Polanski’s 1968 cinematic adaptation of it) might especially enjoy Reborn, which explicitly acknowledges the 1967 novel’s influence.

Worth owning, this. According to F. Paul Wilson’s official website, Reborn is followed, story-wise, by F. Paul Wilson’s The Touch (1986).

Rosemary's Baby by Ira Levin

 

(hb; 1967)

From the inside flap

“Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse were delighted at the chance to move into the Bramford, one of Manhattan’s oldest and most celebrated apartment houses. Their friend Hutch urged them not to; he knew of too many shadows in the Bramford’s past—unsavory tenants like Adrian Marcato, who had practiced witchcraft, and the monstrous Trench sisters. But Rosemary and Guy were clear-thinking and not at all superstitious. They dismissed Hutch’s warnings and moved in.

“At first they were completely happy. Rosemary hung curtains and planned a nursery for the baby she hoped to have some day. Guy pursued his career as a stage and television actor. They met their neighbors, who were friendly and unintrusive. But then, one day when Rosemary was down in the basement laundry room, a girl her own age came in. . .”

 

Review

Set in Manhattan, New York between 1965 and 1966, Ira Levin’s clever, satiric and tightly written devilish thriller is excellent, cinematic in its representation of Rosemary’s victimization and sometimes-disturbing resilience (or breakdown, depending on how you look at it) while maintaining a this-is-a-major-novel feel with its hyper-focused eye for detail, sly real-world references, occurrences and details (which reinforce the personalities of ex-Catholic Rosemary and those around her) and foreshadow the horrors that the expectant mother has yet to fully realize and battle, if she is to survive her ordeal. 

Great, non-gory and one of the all-time best horror novels I’ve read, this—I particularly appreciate how deftly Levin’s prose slips in and out of Rosemary’s stream-of-consciousness observations and fears within a third-person point of view, something a lot of authors seem unable to seamlessly pull off. This is how you construct slow-build paranoia and horror within the fabric of a written and cinematic framework—something more folk horror authors and filmmakers (though Rosemary isn’t folk horror) ought to study and utilize!

Followed by Son of Rosemary.

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The resulting film was released stateside on June 12, 1968. Roman Polanski directed and wrote the screenplay for it. Further details about the film and its noteworthy, excellent players can be found on IMDb and other places.

Night Film by Marisha Pessl

(hb; 2013)

From the inside flap

“On a damp October night, beautiful young Ashley Cordova is found dead in an abandoned warehouse in lower Manhattan. Though her death is ruled a suicide, veteran investigative journalist Scott McGrath suspects otherwise. As he probes the strange circumstances surrounding Ashley’s life and death, McGrath comes face-to-face with the legacy of her father: the legendary, reclusive cult-horror-film director Stanislas Cordova─a man who hasn’t been seen in public for more than thirty years.

“For McGrath, another death connected to this seemingly cursed family dynasty seems more than just a coincidence. Though much has been written about Cordova’s dark and unsettling films, very little is known about the man himself.

“Driven by revenge, curiosity, and a need for the truth, McGrath, with the aid of two strangers, is drawn deeper and deeper into Cordova’s eerie, hypnotic world. . .”

Review

Night Film is one of my favorite reads of 2019. It is highly recommended for fans of Dario Argento, as it is a dark, funny and twisted love letter to the writer/director’s works, with its creepy imagery, symbology, and themes that read like one of Argento’s better, more disturbing works. Night’s structure, with its deeper-into-the-terrifying-labyrinth progressions and characters, also reminded me─in a better-written way─of Arturo Pérez Reverte’s novel The Club Dumas, later the basis for the 1999 Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate. 

Night’s ending─perhaps a comment on the enduring permutations and perceptions of mystery and legend─may prove too low-key for some readers, but I was fine with it. This book is worth owning.

Shock Value, by Jason Zinoman

(hb; 2011: non-fiction)

From the inside flap:

"By the later 1960s, horror was stuck in the past, confined mostly to drive-in theaters and exploitation houses, and shunned by critics. Shock Value tells the unlikely story of how an ambitious art form emerged from a mix of commercial extincts and personal passion. Directors like Wes Craven, Roman Polanski, John Carpenter, and Brian DePalma revolutionized the genre in the 1970s, plumbing their deepest anxieties to explode taboos and bring a gritty realism, confrontational style, and political edge to horror. Zinoman recounts how these innovative directors produced such classics as Rosemary's Baby, Carrie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Halloween, creating a template for horror that has been relentlessly imitated but whose originality has rarely been matched.

"This new kind of film dispensed with the old vampires and werewolves and instead assaulted audiences with portraits of serial killer, the dark side of surburbia, and a brand of nihilistic violence that had never been seen before. Shock Value tells the improbable stories behind the making of these movies, which remain misunderstood even by some of their most die-hard fans. They were directed by strong-willed and often obsessive young men working largely outside of the confines of Hollywood and on shoestring budgets, and whose success depended as much on creative conflict as vision. But once The Exorcist became the highest-grossing film in America, Hollywood took notice, and horror would never be the same."

Review:

Entertaining and informative, this is an excellent, chock-full-of-interviews and occasionally psychological read for cinematic horror fans and those interested in cinematic style tale-telling.

Worth owning, this.