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A review by kaiju_poet
Touch the Night by Max Booth III
5.0
There are so many things I could say about this book. Look, I gave this book five stars, I did! But that isn't surprising, Booth is a cut above most authors, and really I should be given a different scale for Max Booth Books. Like sure, this is a five star book, meaning I think it deserves to be in the top %20 of all books. But I also gave We Need To Do Something five stars. Are they equally good? Are they the same book? Did Max just copy and paste his high school science report over and over for different lengths, slap some covers together and publish them? I mean, maybe...
All joking aside, I read a lot of horror. I read edit, and write horror for a living. Touch the Night is the book Steven King wishes he wrote whenever he thinks about It.
If We Need to Do Something was a masterclass in pacing, Touch the Night is a masterclass in dialogue and human nature. Harold Bloom wrote extensively on Shakespeare and what makes him amazing is not his grasp of human language, but rather his grasp on human nature. (of course, this is white European nature, but still).
Max Booth is a modern Shakespeare, creating works that brush against who we are, sometimes as a society, and often as a family unit. This book hurt me in many ways. I felt the accusations of a father that didn't give an actual shit, I knew the terror of being surrounded by malice when moments before you felt invincible.
Touch the Night is devastatingly full of real characters, characters who buck archetypes, and archetypal behavior to become something real. Gone is the hero's journey and present is the nuanced pain that is life.
I know a lot of authors who write out their nightmares, but very few who find themselves capable of tapping into mine. This book upset me, as a son, as a minority, and as a father. Well done Max, well done.
All joking aside, I read a lot of horror. I read edit, and write horror for a living. Touch the Night is the book Steven King wishes he wrote whenever he thinks about It.
If We Need to Do Something was a masterclass in pacing, Touch the Night is a masterclass in dialogue and human nature. Harold Bloom wrote extensively on Shakespeare and what makes him amazing is not his grasp of human language, but rather his grasp on human nature. (of course, this is white European nature, but still).
Max Booth is a modern Shakespeare, creating works that brush against who we are, sometimes as a society, and often as a family unit. This book hurt me in many ways. I felt the accusations of a father that didn't give an actual shit, I knew the terror of being surrounded by malice when moments before you felt invincible.
Touch the Night is devastatingly full of real characters, characters who buck archetypes, and archetypal behavior to become something real. Gone is the hero's journey and present is the nuanced pain that is life.
I know a lot of authors who write out their nightmares, but very few who find themselves capable of tapping into mine. This book upset me, as a son, as a minority, and as a father. Well done Max, well done.