The Croning

A good story, but clearly the first novel of a short-story author. The plot and the scary interludes are surrounded by far too much padding. Especially considering that I knew exactly what was going on within the first few chapters, I got a little bored and impatient. There are far too many repetitions of the same scenario: Don has an odd experience. He does a little research or stumbles on a clue about his wife's activities. Then he blacks out or wakes up from a nightmare, and subsides into a booze-hazed senility, followed by rather tedious accounts of his navigating his everyday life in an addled and unhappy way.

It's kind of like if Call of Cthulhu had Thurston discovering his uncle's papers, but instead of energetically pursuing the research, he was so disturbed he got really drunk, then spent long passages arguing with his girlfriend, resenting his rich neighbors, and wondering if that other uncle of his was a spy, before proceeding to the tale of Inspector Legrasse and so on.

Worth a read if you're a Lovecraft fan - it definitely owes a lot to H.P., and recreates his approach to cosmic horror in a fairly accurate way. But don't feel bad if you find yourself skimming some sections.