An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. « Back to Bath J Queen New York View All Clearance » 4th Of July Decorations stopped directly supporting page layout in Internet Explorer 6.0. Please click a logo below to upgrade your browser to fully experience our site.Benjamin Stahl's Reviews > Ghost Story 1 of 5 stars2 of 5 stars3 of 5 stars4 of 5 stars5 of 5 stars A Heartbreak Hipster ReviewI hate it when this happens. You have a wonderful writer. You have what is allegedly his "magnum opus". You have a decent movie-adaptation, which, although weighted down with several flaws, boasts a storyline that is both original and creepy.Having read his later, Vietnam-based novel, 'Koko', I'd had very high hopes with 'Ghost Story'. But it all became apparent, fairly quickly, that this "supposed" masterpiece - Stephen King has labelled it this - was really nothing more than an over-the-top, overlong, and overrated mess.

Peter Straub's success, and writing career, has been overall quite muted. He has written several books, but only 'Ghost Story' and 'Koko' seem to have found any considerable audience. Most readers probably remember him as "that guy who helped Stephen King write 'The Talisman' and 'Black House'. However, this novel has enjoyed a long-standing place in what both critics and general readers deem the most important in modern horror fiction. It is totally fair to say that this novel paved the roads for his excellent follow-up, 'Koko' ... and so while I almost certainly didn't love this book - didn't even enjoy it for the most part - I'd still admit that I respect it as decent literature. And so I'll not be immature and rude, but fair and informative, as to why I didn't like this as much as I should have. Firstly - and this is something that plagued 'Koo' as well - Peter Straub has a very slow way of unravelling this story. Now please understand that I have complete respect for that; I really admire and appreciate those authors like King, and Blatty, and Crichton, that unlike less talented writers like Brown and Child (who're all pace, and no buildup), are comfortable with setting the cards out leisurely, providing us instead with some surprisingly interesting and well-formed characters.

Straub is nothing short of genius in his ability to flesh out his characters, doing so to the point where they actually feel like real, genuine people. But I didn't like them as much as I think he wanted me to. Ricky Hawthorne is fine - nothing unlikeable about that man - but that basically sums him up, I think. He's simply "the normal guy" ... and the only thing that really helped me to relate to him was that I also had a bastard of a cold whilst reading this book. curtain eyelet machine hireOn that level I related to Ricky very deeply. ready made curtains chelmsfordSears James is a little better. celery green sheer curtainsBut he still amounts to little more than the impatient and irritable leader of the pack. curtains boroughbridge

Lewis Benedict was easily the most interesting. But he was also a womaniser, fucking different women on and off every week. He also sleeps with his Ricky's wife occasionally. And finally, Don Wanderley and Peter Barnes could just as well have been Ben Mears and Mark Petrie from 'Salem's Lot'. I also couldn't stand Stella Hawthorne. I really thought she was a fucking bitch, and she did not deserve the reader's affections just because she suddenly decides to stop messing around with other men, and turns full cunt-mode on her current toyboy. weighted shower curtain australia'Koko' was very slow-moving as well. curtain tie backs at dunelmBut that had soul, man!!! curtains sarjapurThis felt just as dead and cold as the dreary Milburn setting.

Even when the story reaches its more suspenseful stages - scenes such as Peter and Jim sneaking into Eva Galli's house - the pace is just way too drawn-out, resulting in the simple trespassing of a house being stretched into three damned chapters!!! But let's put the infuriating slowness aside. Let's talk about what ruins this book even more. Frankly, it's the fact that when all the longwinded buildups finally do pay off, they all do the equivalent of a mentally-unstable cashier throwing hundreds and hundreds of notes at you, crying "Take it!! Take it all!!" when all you asked was to get your change back in two $5 notes. Similar to Stephen Nutcase when he missteps, Straub astonished me by straying so far from the taut, realistic horrors of 'Koko', into this ludicrous concept of time-defying shapeshifters that are granted the ability to reincarnate more times than that annoying 'Just Be Good To Me' song. Don't you even think about it, Douchebags...The fact that this novel's monsters weren't even ghosts - like the title suggests - was irritating.

The fact that they come across so nonsensical and unscarily is quite a bit more offensive. With the exception of a few creepy moments - Sears's recount of his time as a young teacher being the most noteworthy - I never felt even slightly unnerved by what was happening in this book. The one time I actually (literally) screamed out in pure fright, was when reading whilst sitting back in the bath, relaxing after a hard day's work, when suddenly, the pole for the shower-curtain fell from above me, splashing water all over the floor. Otherwise, it wasn't scary at all, and so does not even come close to being "the greatest horror novel ever written". The man who said that was, after all, the man who said that his version of 'The Shining' was scarier than Stanley Kubrick's. For 'Slow Children' indeed ...Maybe 'The Exorcist' was the greatest horror novel ever written. But not 'Ghost Story', for God's sake. And before I round this off, there is still one more thing I want to mention. I understand that these things were not ghosts.

But they still bore certain similarities. Please don't interrupt me again.If I were to consider these "things" as ghosts, then I can still give nothing but straight criticism for how unbelievable they were. I prefer my ghosts to be more like those in 'The Sixth Sense', or 'The Changeling', or 'What Lies Beneath'. Ghosts that are limited by their ethereal status; ghosts that perhaps are not even aware that they are dead, are just spurred on by an unexplainable need to see vengeance for whatever deed has thrown them into such a cold, confusing disarray. But these assholes know exactly what they are. And they are so confident with their executions that they often choose to mock and tease their targets, even though they fail almost every time they do try to do something proper.Some people have said that this book carries similar traits to the likes of Stephen King. I couldn't agree with them more. This book sucks in all the ways that 'Salem's Lot', 'The Shining' and 'Carrie' sucked ... except unlike those far superior novels, this one doesn't really have any redeeming features at all.