The Pallbearers Club: A Novel
Ratings36
Average rating3.3
I knew people like this, but they were all British (obvs) and I can imagine that had I been born in the US, they would have been exactly like this chap. Very interesting and just the right amount of weirdness.
3.25 stars.
This was not what I was expecting. It wasn't exactly a horror story but it did invoke some emotions. I wasn't a fan of most of the tone. I thought the side notes and things in red were creative and entertaining.
Ik hield echt van dit idee en de manier waarop het was geschreven. Het audioboek is zeker een meerwaarde hierbij, met hoe Mercy werd geportretteerd. Maar het verhaal op zich was eigenlijk wel saai en sleepte een beetje te lang aan. Het eindigde wel heel goed.
“I am gravid with exhaustion; the splitting and multiple existences drains me.”
holy fuckin vampires. this book was uniquely written & i enjoyed it, it's on the slower more character driven side but i didn't have a problem with it at all!
omfg I hated this book so much in the beginning. I would've liked the whole teenage thing a lot more when I was an actual teenager. as much as I wished for something to happen during much of this book, now that I've finished it, it's really sticking with me. was mercy/mary really a vampire (were the last few pages memoir/truth?) or was she becoming what he needed her to be? was she even mary/mercy? was she the woman from the first viewing, Kathleen? are we supposed to believe art fell victim to his delusions? does mercy essentially stalking him count towards her being a vampire or towards fueling arts delusions? was she even a vampire or an interdimensional being?
my enjoyment reading this book was like a 2 but the thoughts I'm left with are a 3.75 leaving me with a ~3 rating overall.
edit: still thinking about this book and how it reminds me of how ephemeral youth is and of the mystery the universe held and how sad life is and how we will never know. a mysterious memory that that sticks with you all your life.
I appreciate Paul that even if I'm not super into a book there's always stuff I like about it and he's always exploring something real weird and interesting.
In Paul Tremblay's “The Pallbearer's Club,” readers are introduced to an unlikely friendship between high school senior Art Barbara and his charismatic punk-loving friend, Mercy. Art's unusual extra-curricular activity, volunteering at a funeral home, becomes the backdrop for a series of peculiar occurrences.
Tremblay's novel can mislead those expecting a pure horror story. While there are horror elements and subtle nods to the supernatural, they take a back seat to the relationship between the two main characters and the narrative's exploration of trust and perception. The use of Art's annotated memoir as a storytelling device adds layers of ambiguity and complexity, leaving readers to decide whom to believe.
Tremblay blends elements of the supernatural into a narrative of friendship and trust that gives “The Pallbearer's Club” its unique charm. It is a genre-defying tale that keeps readers engaged until the very end, continually questioning the true nature of the events unfolding.
This book was not what I expected it to be and it was not for me. I loved the format, super cool and different, and the few pages of horror did scare me a bit. However, there weren't very many of them and the book as a whole was extremely different from what I thought it was going to be.