Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman
It's
unclear how prestigious the Bram Stoker Award is beyond the Horror
Writers Association (HWA), whose members bestow the prize to writers
(mostly among their own ranks) for “superior achievement” in the
genre. The prizes were first awarded, in a variety of categories, in
1987. Winners receive a statuette made by Society Awards, the same
firm that makes the Emmy Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the GLAAD
Media Award.
Four HWA members have won multiple Bram Stoker Awards for the novel.
The award was conferred on Peter Straub for The Throat (1993); Mr. X (1999); Lost Boy, Lost Girl (2003); In the Night Room (2004); and A Dark Matter (2010).
Four HWA members have won multiple Bram Stoker Awards for the novel.
The award was conferred on Peter Straub for The Throat (1993); Mr. X (1999); Lost Boy, Lost Girl (2003); In the Night Room (2004); and A Dark Matter (2010).
In
the absence of HWA criteria for determining who should and should not
receive a Bram Stoker Award for his or her novel, we'll take a look,
backward in time, in this post, to see how the critics of the day
assessed Straub's prize-winning novels. In a future post, we'll
consider the "superior accomplishment" of Sarah Langan, the remaining multiple Bram Stoker Award winner.
According
to the 1993 book review “Peter
Straub —The Throat” which appears on the Dead
End Follies
website, The
Throat
concludes
the Blue Rose Trilogy, which started with the 1988 novel Koko
and was continued in the 1990 sequel, Mystery. The anonymous reviewer writes, “What
makes it different than other mystery novels is that Peter
Straub juxtaposes Tim
Underhill's
personal trauma suffered during Vietnam war to Millhaven's
deep-rooted, collective haunting,” not much of which will make
sense unless readers have already read “at least Koko.”
The Throat is also unusual, the reviewer says, because “it subverts the . . . war/soldiers relationship common to most novels and makes it come off as an aberration of human nature which only makes victims.” Meanwhile, each novel, considered separately, is “intricate” and “engaging,” albeit “thematically unambitious,” in its presentation of a mystery.
Although Straub calls the three books a trilogy, the reviewer can't help wondering whether Koko and Mystery actually derive from The Throat. If so, Straub's apparent attempt to create “a mythical character” out of Tom Pasmore “kind of works.” Whether or not The Throat and the rest of the trilogy (if it is a trilogy) should be considered a “superior achievement,” the reviewer isn't sure, finding “these books a little mainstream-sih,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
The Throat is also unusual, the reviewer says, because “it subverts the . . . war/soldiers relationship common to most novels and makes it come off as an aberration of human nature which only makes victims.” Meanwhile, each novel, considered separately, is “intricate” and “engaging,” albeit “thematically unambitious,” in its presentation of a mystery.
Although Straub calls the three books a trilogy, the reviewer can't help wondering whether Koko and Mystery actually derive from The Throat. If so, Straub's apparent attempt to create “a mythical character” out of Tom Pasmore “kind of works.” Whether or not The Throat and the rest of the trilogy (if it is a trilogy) should be considered a “superior achievement,” the reviewer isn't sure, finding “these books a little mainstream-sih,” whatever that is supposed to mean.
The reviewer seems to suggest that Straub has a better-than-average idea, but his execution of it doesn't quite come off, in which case we must wonder whether one of the competitors for the 1993 Bram Stoker Award—Kim Newman (Anno Dracula, Bradley Denton (Blackburn), Poppy Z. Brite (Drawing Blood), or Bentley Little (The Summoning)—should have won the honors.
Bob Pastorella is more enthusiastic in singing Straub's praises in “Tattered Tomes: The Throat by Peter Straub.” It's an epic look inside a labyrinth. Rather than being the “bloated, overwritten, thriller that needs a good edit” other reviewers have claimed it to be, the trilogy is a masterpiece in which “every single word matters.”
The books present an “incredible” cast of characters, all of whom are essential to the story; “lengthy yet pertinent flashbacks” that affect the story being told in the present, and ghosts that are, as The Throat's Walter Dragonette explains, “dead people . . . just like you and me,” (except that you and I aren't dead). They're motivated by desires, “miss being alive,” and are extremely sensitive and perceptive, their lack of sensory organs notwithstanding. Ghosts who are more human than the living? The concept, which is central to The Throat and the rest of the trilogy, seems not so much innovative as asinine, especially for an “epic” read.
How
did Mr.
X
fare with the critics of its day? The Kirkus
Review
seems to see it as a pastiche constructed of other writers' earlier
works, with bits of H. P. Lovecraft, pieces of Stephen King, and
scraps of Shirley Jackson scattered throughout his lengthy tale.
There's also an assortment of familiar tropes:
Twins
separated at birth, antiquarians and poltergeists, a plucky love
interest whose own family harbors dark secrets, a fiery climax
straight out of the early Frankenstein
movies, and a denouement offering no fewer than three turns of the
screw: Straub doesn’t miss a trick, or omit a cliché peculiar to
the genre. Overlong and sometimes embarrassingly lurid, though more
often than not quite entertaining. Not by any means Straub’s most
accomplished work . . . .
Which leaves us with the question (perhaps we misunderstood): Isn't the Bram Stoker Award for Novel supposed to go to an author whose work represents an “superior achievement” in the horror genre?
Kirkus Review also sees Lost Boy, Lost Girl as flawed, rather than suggestive of “superior achievement.” The novel's mystery, Straub's forte—or his signature, at any rate—in the horror genre, involves such “ingredients,” the reviewer says, as “a suburban mom’s suicide, a spooky abandoned house, and a teenager’s unwitting pursuit of the truth” concerning a serial killer, all of which are well and good enough in their own way; the problem with the book is its execution. The plot is “circuitous,” breaking “apart into alternations of present action with flashbacks, experienced and relayed through various characters’ viewpoints, Tim’s “journal,” and an omniscient narrative voice only intermittently firmly distinguished from Tim’s own.”
The result of this fragmented and disjointed narrative technique is to destroy the story's unity and what Edgar Allan Poe describes as “totality of effect.” There are also a few incidents and circumstances that strain readers' suspension of disbelief and a creepy insistence upon teenage Mark's “stunning good looks.” The resolution, which implies that fictional characters “have assumed lethal form,” is yet another borrowing, it appears, this time from Straub's sometimes-collaborator, Stephen King's 1993 novel, The Dark Half.
When writing epics, trilogies, and 368-page stand-alone novels, one can use all the help he can get. Is Lost Boy, Lost Girl a “superior achievement” or is Straub just getting by with a little help from his friends? Did it deserve to win over Darker than Night by Owl Goingback, Hannibal by Thomas Harris, Low Men in Yellow Coats by Stephen King, and Hexes by Tom Piccirilli?
A
Kirkus
Review 2004
book review of Peter Straub's In
the Night Room
(2004) was kinder to the author than the Lost
Boy, Lost Girl
reviewer, finding the former book, a sequel to the latter novel, a
better read. For readers who enjoy recurring heroes and multi-volume
tales, In
the Night Roommight be entertaining. There's even a ghost and an angel in the mix.Those who find recurring characters and protracted plots tedious
might agree with the reviewer: “Straub
can still tease the imagination and chill the blood with the best of
them. But it’s probably time to bury Tim Underhill, and move on.”
Although this review is kinder and gentler than other, concerning Straub's other works, have been, it doesn't seem to suggest that In the Night Room is in any way a “superior achievement.” Even so, it is presumably better than the other novels nominated for the 2004 prize. After all, In the Night Room was the winner; the rest (P. D. Cacek [The Wild Caller], Stephen King [The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower], and Michael Laimo [Deep in the Darkness] were losers.
Although this review is kinder and gentler than other, concerning Straub's other works, have been, it doesn't seem to suggest that In the Night Room is in any way a “superior achievement.” Even so, it is presumably better than the other novels nominated for the 2004 prize. After all, In the Night Room was the winner; the rest (P. D. Cacek [The Wild Caller], Stephen King [The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower], and Michael Laimo [Deep in the Darkness] were losers.
Straub's
fifth Bram Stoker Award was
presented to him for his novel A
Dark Matter
(2010). Lacking the specific standards, if any, the Horror Writers
Association (HWA) uses to judge the merits of the novels for which
they award authors the Bram Stoker Award, we must turn, once again,
to a professional book reviewer's judgment of the merits of the
novel. This time, Maureen Corrigan does the honors in her review,
“'Dark
Matter' by Peter Straub,” which was published in The
Washington Post
on Monday, February 8, 2010.
Like reviewers of Straub's other works, Corrigan likes Straub's idea—a cult of hippies perform an occult rite, opening the gates of hell—but has a problem with the author's execution of it:
Like reviewers of Straub's other works, Corrigan likes Straub's idea—a cult of hippies perform an occult rite, opening the gates of hell—but has a problem with the author's execution of it:
Motivated
in part by a desperate desire to overcome writer's block and,
perhaps, publish a book based on the event, he [are we talking about Straub or one of his characters here?] decides to investigate
by reconnecting with the far-flung survivors of Mallon's mysterious
ritual. He wants to hear each of their separate accounts of that
night. And so that event is repeated, reinterpreted and revisited
throughout the novel.
And that's the
big problem: The central story seems too fright-fest-boilerplate to
be worthy of such extended rumination. Doesn't the mystic-on-the-make
always lose control of the black magic he's unleashed? Isn't it
always a bad idea to sign up for one of these Outward Bound
Adventures into Another Dimension? Doesn't someone always lose her
mind or soul or life? In offering each of the aging student survivors
a separate turn at recalling that night's horror, Straub seems to be
trying to one-up his own rather mundane story line.
Along the way, Corrigan suggests, Straub's narrative falls apart to the point that, “by the end of 'A Dark Matter,' it hardly matters anymore whether the wan mystery of What Happened in the Meadow That Night has been solved.” Doesn't sound much like “superior achievement.”
On
the other hand, maybe Straub's competitors' novels really were
worse and those of Stephen King's son, Joe Hill (Horns) Jonathan Maberry's Rot
and Ruin, Linda Watanabe McFerrin's Dead
Love, Joe McKinney's Apocalypse
of the Dead, and Jeff Strand's Dweller. Even so, the award isn't supposed to be for the best novel, but for “superior achievement.”
Is A Dark Matter in any way a "superior achievement"? Without specific standards and a few comments of explanation from the judges of the contest, it's hard to say. What we can be sure of, though, is that, had the professional reviewers we tapped for this exercise been on the panel of judges evaluating Straub's novels, it's likely that none of them would have voted in favor of his receiving a Bram Stoker Award. Rather than finding his novels to reflect “superior achievement,” most of our reviewers have considered them to be mediocre at best.
Is A Dark Matter in any way a "superior achievement"? Without specific standards and a few comments of explanation from the judges of the contest, it's hard to say. What we can be sure of, though, is that, had the professional reviewers we tapped for this exercise been on the panel of judges evaluating Straub's novels, it's likely that none of them would have voted in favor of his receiving a Bram Stoker Award. Rather than finding his novels to reflect “superior achievement,” most of our reviewers have considered them to be mediocre at best.