June 1, 2011
Mr. Shivers
Mr. Shivers
Robert Jackson Bennett
Orbit Press, January 2010
It’s all Shirley Jackson’s fault, this review.
I love Shirley Jackson; she and children’s author Sylvia Cassedy are the two authors I’ll read over and over again, finding some new little detail to love every time. So, when someone names an award after a such an author, I end up expecting a lot from the nominees.
In past years, I’ve not been disappointed. I read all the novels on the finalist list for 2009, and was actually a little distressed that only one of them could win. (After weeks of pondering the qualities of each book, I finally placed my hopes with Big Machine by Victor LaValle. This turned out to be the judges’ pick as well, but I’d like to think it was a pretty close competition.)
This year, I was concerned that the intervention of life’s typical chaos would keep me from getting all 6 nominees finished, so I read a little about them and ranked them by interest. Mr. Shivers topped that list: a supernatural/speculative tale set during the Great Depression was a completely new idea to me, and Bennett does evoke that setting quite well. There’s mix of modernity with backwards superstition, and there are strange, uncivilized places yet in America. The characters and dialogue fit smoothly with their time as well; you could just as easily be reading Steinbeck as a new author.
The plot, on the other hand… well. The first one-half to two-thirds was fine, as the scene laying and character development took center stage. But once all the pieces were laid out, the movement of the plot became a trifle predictable. Okay, really predictable. And despite the enormous “warning: plot twist ahead” banners that litter the last several chapters, none of the characters are genre-savvy enough to look up and read them. Maybe this was supposed to be a comment on inevitability or fate or some such, but instead I was left with the sense that these characters, who were smart and careful about their plans for so much of the story, have suddenly been stricken with plot-necessitated idiocy so that the author can get them into the dumb and dangerous situations he’s planned.
I feel like maybe I’m slamming this work over-much. It isn’t a bad book, really: it’s just that it’s a merely okay book. And merely okay isn’t sufficient to stand in Jackson’s footsteps.
I look forward to seeing Mr. Bennett’s next work; I have a sneaking suspicion he’s capable of improving upon this books weaknesses, and coupled with the setting and character skills he already possesses, he should develop into an excellent author. I despair for the rest of this year’s nominee pool though.
