Well hello there lovely readers!
'Tis time for another book review, and also for me to introduce you to yet another hashtag campaign!
So at some point in my general internet use, I stumbled upon Women in Horror month (#WIHM), which just so happens to be this current month of February. Since I am addicted to going against the grain, and since February is generally considered the month of love, I straight away decided to get involved in this, and after a little research I found and bought The Keeper by Sarah Langan.
Now, I'm not going to lie, this has been a very difficult book to review. I can't quite even answer the question of whether I liked it or not. About half the book was interesting and believable, and the other half was a little, well, WTF. At first I thought the WTF-ness was because of me: firstly I'm a little bit of a book-snob, and I don't really get much from reading your average Good Housekeeping recommendation [not that GH recommended this. I wish they were so open minded]. I'm also not normally much of a pure horror reader, so I thought maybe that had something to do with why I just wasn't so sure about it.
However, I will say that certain elements of the book struck a chord. The Keeper tells the tale of Susan and Liz Marley, two sisters living in the declining town of Bedford, USA. The town was once busy and prosperous due to the jobs created by its paper mill, but after this is closed down the town becomes an unpopulated wreck. This resonated with me because the small town I grew up in is facing a similar prospect. When the Dounreay nuclear power plant was built in Caithness in the 1950s, the population of the area sky rocketed to around 3 times what it had been previously. In recent years Dounreay have announced the decommissioning of the site, and the county looks set to lose on of its biggest employers. Some locals have begun to take action to grow other local industries before the site is closed down completely, but if these are not successful, it is entirely possible that my wee hometown will become another Bedford. Witnessing the immediate aftermath of the closure of such a site was intriguing, and I can totally believe that mutant dead people might also torment the town of Thurso, avenging the wrongs done to them and punishing the town for its inaction in the face of environmental and economic destruction.
In this sense, The Keeper is very clever. It looks at current environmental and financial issues in a fresh and approachable way, and ties it in wonderfully with the main horrific action of the story. However, something in Langan's writing style is not so 'tied in.' At times, her direct, matter-of-fact narrative voice diminishes the atmosphere of the novel, and sucks the reader back to reality, which lessens the fun of it all. If this had happened once or even twice it could be overlooked, but unfortunately The Keeper repeatedly breaks its own illusion and leaves the reader a little, well, WTF'd.
However, that said, I made it all the way to the end of the book without too much trouble. It is also worth noting that The Keeper is Langan's debut novel, and it's follow up, The Messenger, won Langan the Bram Stoker Award, which she has won a total of 3 times. All in all, I think if you're into horror stories you could do far worse than this one, however it did not blow my socks off.
Don't forget to follow me on goodreads as I take part in Read Women 2014, and leave your comments below if you have them because I <3 comments!
Love to everyone!
Naomi
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