Off Season
by Jack Ketchum
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Book Reviews of Off Season
Book Review: It's not for everybody, but if you can stick it out...
Summary: 4 Stars
it's worth it.
I'm a horror fan, but I generally don't go for this type of stuff. Unless it's really well made, like Tobe Hooper's "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", I usually find this area of horror to be too... I don't know, too blunt. Like someone who enjoys romance novels would be turned off by hardcore porn, you know?
But for some reason, I kept coming back to this book on the rack, and finally decided to give it a go. It was like the literary equivalent of a train wreck - you don't want to keep reading, yet you want to. It was decently written, but not the best I've ever read. And yet somehow it pulled me in. I had to know what happened next, and for something so ungodly, it went down very smoothly. It wasn't that original - as I was reading I was thinking it seemed a lot like Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes", and there were some elements borrowed from George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead" (which Ketchum even admits to in the afterword); but it didn't bother me all that much. As the late Alex Haley once put it, "There are only 28 plots in the world."
I can see why this book was so reviled when it was first published (and to think that version was even less graphic!) It's definitely not for everybody's tastes. Even "hardcore" horror fans might find it hard to keep reading once the "conflict" begins. But if you can stick it out, you just might find it one of the more rewarding reads you've come across in a while.
Book Review: Not as gory as I had anticipated
Summary: 3 Stars
I guess from all the hype and the reputation that this long out of print, or hard to find book has, I was really looking forward to reading this just to see what all the fuss was about.
Well, now that's it's in a mass market edition I finally had a chance to read it and I have to say I was a little let down. To me it just wasn't the out and out horrifying gorefest I was led to believe it was. Ketchum isn't a bad writer; I certainly kept turning the pages and it held my interest, but when it came to the attacks and slaughter it just didn't do all that much for me.
Maybe I'm just jaded from all the horror I've read over the years and the films I've seen, but it just wasn't as horrifying and gruesome as I thought it would be. It had some sick and gruesome stuff to be sure, and I can see where some readers might find it scary and overly gory, but it was so over the top that I found it hard to get all worked up over it.
I'm glad I finally got to read it though and might pick it up and re-read it in the future, but for my money, I think The Girl Next Door, while not as over the top, managed to convey a sense of horror and disturbance in me that Off Season didn't.
I'll definitely pick up a couple more of Ketchum's books because I did like the two I read, but to me Off Season just didn't live up to the reputation. Not horrible by any means, just overhyped to me.
Book Review: NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART...
Summary: 3 Stars
It is difficult for me to know who to recommend this book to. I have not been a fan of the recent glut of "torture porn" movies. Off Season does share some similarities with that genre - which is to say that characters are tortured to death in unbelievably gruesome ways and Ketchum describes all of it in minute detail. That having been said, Ketchum does not treat his characters as cookie-cutter victims, the way they are in movies. He makes the reader care about his characters before he has unthinkable things happen to him.
I was turned on to Jack Ketchum by reading praise from Stephen King. Ketchum is very well-respected in the horror-writing community. The story of Off Season is an updated version of the Sawney Beane legend: the story a family living in the woods that, over the course of a few generations, devolves into cannibalistic monsters. In this novel, the cannibal family is forced out of their hiding place and come into closer contact with humanity. They soon discover that human beings taste better than fish. The protagonists are a group of people staying at a summer house in September (off season).
This is a truly horrific, disturbing, and graphic novel. It is very scary - just be sure you know what you are in for before you start reading. There is nothing genteel about this novel.
Book Review: A Cut Above The Regular Mass Market Horror Novel
Summary: 4 Stars
Jack Ketchum really grabbed me with this novel. I was expecting something utterly banal with lots of gore thrown in to keep the average reader hooked, but actually....Jack Ketchum can write great suspense. I was hooked after the first several chapters. His descriptions of the horrifying circumstances that face his characters are truly disturbing, so kudos for him to even making me grimace. But, as I stated, this is not explicit gore just for the sake of gore. Ketchum has a great style that keeps you turning the pages, no matter what you expect to find as you race through this novel. His characters are well realized for the genre, and he unflinchingly puts them through hell for the sake of the story. This reads like a superb thriller (which it is), but the horror elements kick it up several notches in intensity. This is a relentless horror novel, not for the weak hearted, but if you can stomach the splatter, it is rewarding. I read this book in one sitting the day I got it. I have been bored with a lot of horror I've picked up in recent months, but this grabbed me on a visceral level I haven't felt since reading Clive Barker's Books of Blood. Fantastic novel, and now finally the real deal version, without annoying edits. If you're a fan of horror (and you must be since you may be reading this), read this novel immediately.Book Review: One of the most visceral and unnerving horror novels I've ever read.
Summary: 5 Stars
Years back, I picked up University, by Bentley Little, based off of the cover blurb by Stephen King, who said that it was like nothing in contemporary horror. He was right. For years, University has been one of the most extreme horror novels I've ever read, one that pushed beyond the normal boundaries of what is and isn't done in the genre. I never thought it would be topped, but that was before Off Season. Ketchum's first novel has a notorious past that he explains ably in the afterword here, but that's not important. What is important is that this is not a book for the faint of heart. Like Little, Ketchum enjoys pushing beyond the boundaries of what's acceptable, of what's forbidden; what sets Ketchum apart, though, is the fact that most of his horror remains grounded in reality. There is nothing supernatural here, only human, and that gives the book a cold horror that's unlike much else I've read. It's an intense, disturbing, horrifying experience, and it's definitely an uncompromising vision. But its solid craft, strong writing, and ability to ramp up the tension really makes it an essential read for any horror fan who can handle it. You won't easily forget it, much as you try, but there's no denying that it's a success on its own merits. As a horror novel, it succeeds in every way imaginable.