I would love to see a movie version of this as there are some truly weird and spooky images throughout this book. Simmons sets the story up, but just past midway or so, things begin to really get interesting, with the last hundred pages or so culminating in a really exciting dénouement. The book started a little slowly, while Mr.
Just as they’re ready to leave, Mike spots a white face in the shadows, so the priest tries to call out what he believes is a prankster trying to spook them, but soon finds that he is horribly misguided in this assessment. At first, there is nothing at his grave-site but some disturbed earth which “Father C” tries to brush off as cemetery upkeep. Even so, he decides to humor Mike who seems sincerely frightened, by agreeing to follow him to the cemetery where one of the animated corpses, a World War I dough-boy who used to be an unwelcome suitor of his grandmother when she was younger and now haunts her outside of her window late at night, is buried. The priest initially tries to talk the boy down and allay his fears by offering more realistic alternatives for some of the things he’s been experiencing. One poignant scene that drives home this disparity is when one of the boys, Mike O’Rourke, a choir boy, tries to confide in his mentor, Father Cavanaugh, a no nonsense priest whom he has befriended. The main characters, a group of misfit kids (apparently based on Dan Simmons, his brother, and their childhood friends), decide to investigate the disappearance of one of their classmates and stumble upon the dark truth and against all odds decide to fight it since the adults seem to be oblivious of what is really going on. Kids start disappearing or ending up dead then later reappear as puppets of this entity that resides in a bell that is kept in the building of the local grade school that has just been shut down for good at the end of the school year.
This book stands on its own as a classic of the “horrors of childhood” genre.īasically, without giving too much away, there is an evil entity that has recruited a few of the locals: a school principal, a teacher, the driver of a rendering truck, and a few animated corpses to pave the way for its apocalyptic scheme.
Fair enough, but that is where the similarities end. I was told by a friend that it was similar to Stephen king’s “It” in the sense that it involves a group of young kids, back in the early 1960’s who join together to fight ancient evil that is awakening to prey upon the townsfolk. I just recently read the book “Summer of Night”, by Dan Simmons.
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