Customer Comments

I can see and understand everyone's issues with this novel, I can. You might call it underwritten or underdeveloped, you might even call it pulpy and lowbrow as compared to Austen's other novels. You have every right to do those things - I'm just going to assume that, if you do, you're also one of those people who looks down their nose at Stephen King and other 'popular' authors. Which is funny, because that also means you're exactly the kind of person Austen is trying to goad in the writing of this novel. So, she wins. And if you just enjoy this novel for the fun of it, well, she wins too. Smart cookie, that woman was.

Amazing. Career-defining. This is the big one, the epic that establishes Joe Hill as a titanic force in the fiction world. He learned a lot from his dad, yes that's true - but this book is on par with some of King's best work and it's only Hill's third (not including Locke & Key) book. It is massive, full of heart and life and terror and wonder. It's actually... it's hard to find words to explain the surprisingly simple beauty of a novel like this. This is Great American Fiction, right here - tackling family themes and societal issues while also burning rubber to tell a heart-poundingly terrifying story. At 700ish pages, it practically flies out of your hands even in the slow bits. I stayed up two nights running until I fell asleep with the book on my chest because I could. not. put it down.

I genuinely have trouble expressing my love for these novels. They are bleak, dark, funny, smart, beautiful, and above all full of life. Patrick Melrose is one of the more real characters I've ever had the pleasure to know and Edward St. Aubyn's writing is some of the most gorgeous prose this side of Lawrence Durrell. It's hip, this year, to say that one loved these books - but I am actually a better person (writer, thinker, human being) for having read them. They're THAT good.