Dark Harvest
Ratings25
Average rating3.7
15
Ratings25
Average rating3.7
Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and named one of the 100 Best Novels of 2006 by *Publishers Weekly*, *Dark Harvest* by Norman Patridge is a powerhouse thrill-ride with all the resonance of Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery."
Halloween, 1963. They call him the October Boy, or Ol' Hacksaw Face, or Sawtooth Jack. Whatever the name, everybody in this small Midwestern town knows who he is. How he rises from the cornfields every Halloween, a butcher knife in his hand, and makes his way toward town, where gangs of teenage boys eagerly await their chance to confront the legendary nightmare. Both the hunter and the hunted, the October Boy is the prize in an annual rite of life and death.
Pete McCormick knows that killing the October Boy is his one chance to escape a dead-end future in this one-horse town. He's willing to risk everything, including his life, to be a winner for once. But before the night is over, Pete will look into the saw-toothed face of horror--and discover the terrifying true secret of the October Boy . . .
"This is contemporary American writing at its finest."--*Publishers Weekly* (starred review) on Dark Harvest
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Reviews with the most likes.
The experience of reading this story can be summarized as, “Wait, what?”
I have to give Partridge points for sheer ridiculous audacity. He takes an unexpected point of view and unapologetically plunges ahead with it. The story is distinctive and intriguing in many ways.
However, it's also highly variable in quality. I guess this has the merit of being the least-horrible use of second-person narration I've encountered? The writing throughout had me similarly ambivalent: just as I was musing on an inventive plot point, a howlingly bad simile would yank me out of the story. Just as I was getting interested in a character, a cardboard cutout would caper into frame and ruin the mood. Worst of all, just as I was getting invested in the lore behind the tale, it petered out. Horror benefits when an author avoids overexplaining, but this suffers from a clear case of underexplaining. For me, this needed an eventual reveal that would give us a picture (however fuzzy) of how this cycle got started and what was at stake.
This is short and economical, so if it sounds intriguing, definitely give it a shot. It was imperfect but entertaining.
Fantastic cover; passable book. If the Goodreads Gods allowed for it this would be the definition of a 2.5 rating. Still, the concept is pretty cool and I'll probably check out the film adaptation if it ever actually comes out.
Only one boy wins
kill the pumpkin, eat his heart
go live on the farm.
