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A review by billymac1962
The Cellar by Richard Laymon
3.0
The following review is from my old website...this didn't make the initial migration to Goodreads for some reason.
It wasn't until finishing this novel that I decided to "skull" this review. But the ending was very good, and it was quite shocking in parts.
However...the heroine of the story, Donna, supposedly a caring mother, pissed me off so often that I was tempted to throw the book through a window. I mean, here's a woman on the run with her 12 year old daughter. Her husband, Roy, a child-raping psychotic, has just been released from prison, and doting Donna takes every chance she can get to abandon her daughter and bang away with some stranger (Jud) she just met. It was so bad, I was actually hoping Roy would snatch daughter Sandy...it would have served Donna right. And the love scenes...ugh. Was Laymon 14 years old when he wrote this??
Another unbelievable aspect was Sandy immediately latching onto Jud's buddy Larry, a perfect stranger. This from a 12 year old girl who was raped by her father six years ago.
Give me a break. But...the novel is so short, you don't have to put up with this ridiculousness for long. The ending alone was enough to merit a skull for this review, but I doubt very much I'll be reading Laymon again.
FYI, my website had a cool rotating skull beside those novels I felt bestowed such an honor. This one ranked a skull for the ending alone, but I'm hard pressed to go as high as a four stars...hmmm...OK, three stars but with reservations.
It wasn't until finishing this novel that I decided to "skull" this review. But the ending was very good, and it was quite shocking in parts.
However...the heroine of the story, Donna, supposedly a caring mother, pissed me off so often that I was tempted to throw the book through a window. I mean, here's a woman on the run with her 12 year old daughter. Her husband, Roy, a child-raping psychotic, has just been released from prison, and doting Donna takes every chance she can get to abandon her daughter and bang away with some stranger (Jud) she just met. It was so bad, I was actually hoping Roy would snatch daughter Sandy...it would have served Donna right. And the love scenes...ugh. Was Laymon 14 years old when he wrote this??
Another unbelievable aspect was Sandy immediately latching onto Jud's buddy Larry, a perfect stranger. This from a 12 year old girl who was raped by her father six years ago.
Give me a break. But...the novel is so short, you don't have to put up with this ridiculousness for long. The ending alone was enough to merit a skull for this review, but I doubt very much I'll be reading Laymon again.
FYI, my website had a cool rotating skull beside those novels I felt bestowed such an honor. This one ranked a skull for the ending alone, but I'm hard pressed to go as high as a four stars...hmmm...OK, three stars but with reservations.