The Pallbearers Club

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that is a good example of art's prose-stylings; dripping with self-deprecation, laden with ominous foreshadowing and unnecessarily grandiose language, and mercy's more lively, conversational voice is a breath of fresh air as she rewrites his-story, often better, and certainly less self-consciously, than his own version of events. The story itself is a manuscript , and it starts out with “Art Barber” writing a memoir on the heels of turning 50. He has changed the names to protect the identities, but basically it’s a detail of his life, starting at age 17 to the present that chronicles when he first met “Mercy” and the start of their unusual friendship. BOND: And thinking about that, this book is very much located in the late '80s. It's a very Gen-X story, right? I also just did not buy all the supernatural stuff. The Mercy commentary is fantastic, and what this book does quite well is leave you with a question of "did this really happen?" Is Art making all this up? Or is Mercy covering up secrets she doesn't want anyone to know? The ambiguity walks a fine line, but it walks it very well. It walks it so well that I wish the rest of the book had more there there! The supernatural stuff was never really scary, I found it confusing more often than not.

Paul Tremblay just keeps getting better, and THE PALLBEARERS CLUB may be his most transcendent work to date. It’s a psychological thriller, a horror novel and a coming-of-age tale, and has enough appropriate humor sprinkled in without ever being campy. The book threatens to reach cult status, which is the highest compliment I can give it. If your looking for a spine tingling thriller this is definitely not it. If you are looking for a boring, long drawn out, confusing look into a love hate relationship between two “friends” with a weird paranormal twist this might be the book for you. Very disappointed. I thought of pushing through to the end but this was a group read where many people said I needn't bother and I'm more than happy to take that advice. I've got better things to spend my reading time on. The Pallbearers Club constructs a maze of uncanny ambiguity and disquiet—a Nabokovian labyrinth that sustains its mystery past the point few writers but Paul Tremblay would risk.”— Ramsey CampbellIn his brilliant new novel, Tremblay takes on the well-mined small-town, coming-of-age horror trope, transforming it into something so original, it elevates the entire genre." — Booklist (starred review) A long, appalled pause). Hüsker Dü are my favorite band and the lead singer Bob Mould is my favorite musician. I’ve probably seen Bob perform over thirty times. More than even reading books, it was listening to Hüsker Dü and Bob’s later music that inspired me to create something myself. I learned to play guitar and I wanted to be a punk musician, even if it was in shitty bands. But it never happened and I figured I was a better writer than musician. Some of the music is still there in the fiction, though. That a story engenders a shared recognition of something being terribly wrong is a defiantly hopeful thing to me. I think punk has a similar raised-fist—a “we know we're doomed, but at least we know the truth” vibe.

If there was a problem, and yes for me there was, it's the ever-explaining wordiness of Art Barbara who writes the memoir here. It doesn't continuously occur though, which makes me wonder if there's a message behind it. The time in between the best plot elements (beginning, middle and a spot-on ending) are not interesting enough to carry the story forward in any way except in passing the years. in this book, the narrator mentions being at club babyhead in the 90s, a club yours truly also frequented in the 90s. therefore, it is within the realm of possibility that karen brissette (the one who is ME, and not the character from tremblay's novel A Head Full of Ghosts) fictionally crossed paths with the pseudonymous narrator (who may or may not be paul tremblay), at that club or any of the other providence institutions namedropped in this book, and all i gotta say about that is JEEZ, tremblay, stalk much?An intimate novel told as a conversation between its two main players-- Art and Mercy-- as Art writes his "memoir" and Mercy provides her commentary on his "novel." Told from 1988-2017, readers get to know both characters very well, enough to know that while we want to give both a big hug, we cannot trust either.. The result, a story that is both touching and terrifying, snarky and serious, immersive and compelling.