Peter Straub Explores a Dark Matter in His New Novel

I want to like Peter Straub. I really do. I am a huge fan of horror fiction. I like reading Lovecraft and Poe. I am a huge fan of Stephen King to the point I have to buy every one of his new books the day they come out in hardcover. I love Robert R. McCammon and wish he would start writing a lot more often and again. I have even been known to pick up a Dean Koontz book from time to time even though I think he is more of a thriller writer than a horror writer.

I enjoyed both books that Straub wrote with King. Having liked them so much I went back to my childhood and remembered the movie made out of his book "Ghost Story" and how much it scared me. I got a battered paperback copy and tried to read it. I was not able to get very far. Years later, I picked up the book again and, this time, was able to get into it and finish it. I enjoyed it.

I have not read anything else of his, I must admit. They always sound interesting when I read the descriptions, but there is just something off-putting about his work that causes me to put the book back down and keep searching for something else. However, I got a new eReader for Christmas and saw that the online bookstore was going to carry his new book "A Dark Matter" which was due to be released sometime after the first of the year. The ads were touting Straub's return to "supernatural horror" after so many books that had horrific elements but were more grounded in reality. I put it on my list of books to buy and download.

I finally did this month. I was excited to start reading. The premise sounded like something that I would get into. I have been reading a lot of H.P. Lovecraft and his tales of worlds running parallel to our own filled with horrific monsters and things that can, by a single look, drive a man insane. It looked as if Straub's book might be in that vein.

The story of "A Dark Matter" is one that has been told in horror before. A group of young people, most of them still in high school, fall under the spell of a self-proclaims prophet. This takes place in the 60s, when so many young people were looking to change the world and willing to follow someone who claimed he could. In this book, his name is Spencer Mallon, and he uses his looks, pseudo-wisdom and silver tongue to hypnotize women of all ages and men and women alike into following him as if he is a savior. In reality, he is a con artist, a man full of B.S. and who mooches like a vampire off of his disciples for a while before moving on to more fertile ground.

In Straub's tale, however, Mallon manages to touch the "other side" late one night in a meadow. He has convinced his little band that he can perform a ritual which will bring enlightenment to the world and change things. However, he is an amateur dabbling in the world of adults and things he cannot possibly understand. What happens in that meadow, ultimately, ruins the lives of everyone who was there, causes the brutal death of one and causes another to simply vanish.

The tale is told in the first person. It is the husband of one of the high school students who was in that meadow. In fact, Lee, the main character, was friends with most of those young people. However, he did not fall under Mallon's spell, so he was not there in the meadow on the night things went wrong. So far, his friends have refused to speak to him about it.

The opening of the book is a confusing mess but, in a way, it makes sense. Seeing a homeless man reminds Lee of his friend "Hootie" who went insane after that night and has been in a mental hospital for thirty years. What happens next is a jumble of thoughts, characters, actions and memories without context and it makes getting into the novel a true struggle. What the hell is this guy talking about?

In a way that makes sense. Since the story is being told from this character's perspective, it makes sense that it is jumbled. His own thoughts are jumbled. Only as we get to the end of the chapter, when he decides he is going to once and for all, find out what happened that night, does the story start to come together in a way that makes sense. The rest of the novel is Lee's journey to find his old friends and hear their version of what happened that night in the meadow. It culminates in the story his own wife, also named Lee, tells as she is the final piece of the puzzle.

The story is promising and it is very readable. I found myself wanting to find out what was going to happen next, relentlessly turning the pages, but I also found a kind of emptiness in the narrative. There was just something infuriating about the entire novel as I found myself completely unable to relate to these characters. I found myself puzzled over the strange tales they told instead of horrified or dazzled.

I think that is the problem with Straub. He is a very smart man. From what I have been able to find out he is very smart and well read. As such, his characters just come across as slightly smarter and better than the rest of us. While King and others strive to make their characters as relatable as possible, Straub's characters always seem just slightly out of reach. This is especially true in "A Dark Matter." As such, although the stories each characters tell are interesting, they were also not relatable. Therefore the entire book still seems like and enigma, a puzzle, a labyrinth that I still cannot access. I think the average reader of horror might feel the same way.

I hope Straub keeps writing and he sticks with horror. I want to like him. In fact, I may go back and read some of his earlier work and see if there is a difference. I appreciate the attempt he makes in "A Dark Matter" but I think his reach may have exceeded his grasp in this case.