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A review by futurememory
Afraid by Jack Kilborn
4.0
After two heavy-weight tomes in a row (Moby-Dick and Swann's Way), I've decided to spend my days reading some good old genre fiction.
I used to be a big horror aficionado back in third grade. I ate up Goosebumps and other "scary" books as soon as they were published. I read ghost story after ghost story until I freaked myself out so badly that I could no longer sleep. I started imagining things and seeing things, and I'd lie awake in bed, drenched in cold sweat and sheer terror, waiting for some malevolent spirit to come stab me in my sleep with a butcher knife.
It became such a paralyzing problem that I swore off all horror. I gave away all of my books. Any time a thriller or scary movie came out, I'd shy away. Horror has been mildly terrorizing me ever since. No, I haven't seen the latest scary movie. Survival horror video games? Can't do them. I've thrown the controller and screamed at the slightest thing. My imagination is too vivid. I scare easily.
I got Afraid on the Kindle for cheap, and hesitantly dipped my toe into the horror pool. I read this on my commute, in broad daylight, never alone. I safeguarded myself.
Let me tell you, Afraid is not for the squeamish, or for gore-virgins. I'm serious. I'm not averse to blood and guts. I've read both Battle Royale (the only book to make me physically nauseous) and American Psycho (it probably has one of the most repulsive chapters I've ever read in literature). Here, there were several times that I had to shut the Kindle off several times and just sit, several scenes were too disgusting to even repeat. The plotting, especially in the first half of the book, is so breakneck that I found myself short of breath and dreading the turn of every page. There were no breaks. Unrelenting. I've never read anything like it before. The book was assaulting me.
I found that if something particularly awful was happening, I'd have to shut the Kindle off. But then the character would be in limbo in my head, still suffering and being tortured at the hands of one of Kilborn's depraved psychos. It was worse leaving them suspended than reading on. So I read on.
Kilborn has an economical and masterful way of describing body mutilation. Our heroes are so physical. They have bodies. They get hurt, in horrific and disfiguring ways.
The book's tension and violence actually levels out midway through, and the ride become much more bearable. Not to say that the pacing slows down. That's not the case at all. But the levels of sickening scenes die down and Afraid becomes pretty readable.
Sure, the book has a lot of the tropes of the techno-thriller horror novel, and none of the characters are particularly deep, but this was one that I dreaded reading almost as much as I dreaded putting it down. Visceral stuff.
I used to be a big horror aficionado back in third grade. I ate up Goosebumps and other "scary" books as soon as they were published. I read ghost story after ghost story until I freaked myself out so badly that I could no longer sleep. I started imagining things and seeing things, and I'd lie awake in bed, drenched in cold sweat and sheer terror, waiting for some malevolent spirit to come stab me in my sleep with a butcher knife.
It became such a paralyzing problem that I swore off all horror. I gave away all of my books. Any time a thriller or scary movie came out, I'd shy away. Horror has been mildly terrorizing me ever since. No, I haven't seen the latest scary movie. Survival horror video games? Can't do them. I've thrown the controller and screamed at the slightest thing. My imagination is too vivid. I scare easily.
I got Afraid on the Kindle for cheap, and hesitantly dipped my toe into the horror pool. I read this on my commute, in broad daylight, never alone. I safeguarded myself.
Let me tell you, Afraid is not for the squeamish, or for gore-virgins. I'm serious. I'm not averse to blood and guts. I've read both Battle Royale (the only book to make me physically nauseous) and American Psycho (it probably has one of the most repulsive chapters I've ever read in literature). Here, there were several times that I had to shut the Kindle off several times and just sit, several scenes were too disgusting to even repeat. The plotting, especially in the first half of the book, is so breakneck that I found myself short of breath and dreading the turn of every page. There were no breaks. Unrelenting. I've never read anything like it before. The book was assaulting me.
I found that if something particularly awful was happening, I'd have to shut the Kindle off. But then the character would be in limbo in my head, still suffering and being tortured at the hands of one of Kilborn's depraved psychos. It was worse leaving them suspended than reading on. So I read on.
Kilborn has an economical and masterful way of describing body mutilation. Our heroes are so physical. They have bodies. They get hurt, in horrific and disfiguring ways.
The book's tension and violence actually levels out midway through, and the ride become much more bearable. Not to say that the pacing slows down. That's not the case at all. But the levels of sickening scenes die down and Afraid becomes pretty readable.
Sure, the book has a lot of the tropes of the techno-thriller horror novel, and none of the characters are particularly deep, but this was one that I dreaded reading almost as much as I dreaded putting it down. Visceral stuff.