The Girl Next Door
by Jack Ketchum
List Price:
Our Price: $14.96
You Save: $4.99 (25%)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Buy Used: from $9.42 (click here)
Category: Book
See more book details and other editions
Book Summary Information
Author: Jack KetchumIllustrator: Neal McPheeters
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2003-07-15
ISBN: 1892950618
Number of pages: 244
Publisher: Overlook Connection Press
Product features:
- ISBN13: 9781892950611
- Condition: New
- Notes: BRAND NEW FROM PUBLISHER! 100% Satisfaction Guarantee. Tracking provided on most orders. Buy with Confidence! Millions of books sold!
Book Reviews of The Girl Next Door
Book Review: Astounding.
Summary: 5 Stars
(...)Jack Ketchum, The Girl Next Door (Overlook Connection Press, 1989)
Stephen King, in On Writing, said some good words about Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door. Immediately, the book became impossible to find in its original printing, with collectors snapping up every extant copy, and new ones coming on the market fetching prices that make no sense for a mass market paperback. Overlook Connection put out a new edition of the book, but really, twenty-six bucks for a two hundred eighty-three page trade paperback? And this they call their "affordable" line?
That said, if any eighties horror novel of comparable thickness is worth the insane prices it fetches either on the collectors' market or in its new edition, The Girl Next Door is it. I've read a whole lot of eighties horror novels over the years, and I can safely say that not a single one of them affected me as did The Girl Next Door.
Not that, fifteen years after its original publication, there's much that's out-and-out shocking about The Girl Next Door's content. In the age of such stars ascendant as Robert Devereaux, Charlee Jacob, and Monica O'Rourke, tales of the extremes of human degradation are starting to look positively old-school. However, even the brilliant work of all three of those authors, who are some of the best in the business today, lacks some sort of component present in The Girl Next Door. I honestly don't know what that component is. Perhaps it's the complete lack of motive for the events in The Girl Next Door; while Jacob's characters suffer far more extreme fates on a regular basis, the shadows of war, drugs, and other spectres are always in the background, on which the reader can conveniently pin some blame for the forces therein. Ketchum gives us a reason for one character to behave as that character does in the novel-- a descent into dementia that accelerates as time goes on. (And, really, it's something of a lame reason, which is entirely the point.) But what causes all the rest of them to go nuts? No one knows. And that, folks, is the essence of horror.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. For those of you who have not yet found the time and money to track down a copy of this gem, a quick synopsis. Davy is your typical 1950s kid-- the world is bucolic, in that odd, nostalgia-tinged way that you know from talking to anyone you know who was alive during the decade, but Davy is an observant enough kid to know that not everything is copacetic (the shadow of the cold war hanging over the country, for example). Davy's life takes a turn when, just as he's hitting puberty, Meg and her sister Susan move in next door. Meg is your basic twelve-year-old's-ideal-girlfriend-- older, beautiful, and naïve about the ways of the area into which she's moved after the death of her parents in a car accident. Moreover, she's literally the girl next door-- the girls are staying with their aunt Ruth, Davy's next-door neighbor and mother to Davy's best friend Donny.
The problem is that Ruth is going insane. Slowly. (We get an idea that Davy's parents are, or were, aware of this previously; there's a mention of something that occurred between Ruth and Davy's parents some years before the narrative. We are never told what it is.) Her kids are already somewhat cracked, especially young Ralphie, called Woofer by his friends. Eventually, this particular madness affects, to some extent, every child in town, even Davy. All except Meg and her sister Susan. And they, of course, are the objects upon which the madness unleashes itself.
Coupled with the reasonlessness of the events that unfold in the book is a profound sense of connection with the characters. It struck me while reading that Ketchum's decision to use Davy as the narrator, rather than Donny, or even Meg or Ruth, was primarily responsible for this in some way I couldn't quite discern. Perhaps it's Davy's puppy love combined with his odd, detached sense of horror at everything that unfolds, or maybe it's just that Davy isn't quite so affected by everything around him, and therefore keeps a less emotional eye to the proceedings than one might expect from a different point of view. Or perhaps it's the contradiction inherent in those last two sentences, which does not come off as in any way implausible in the book. Whatever the reason, the reader is drawn to a profound sympathy with Meg and Susan, and to a lesser extent Davy, that makes the book resonate that much more.
At its core, though, the effectiveness of The Girl Next Door is enhanced by orders of magnitude when the reader is informed (not in the book; one must do a little digging to find this out) that, like the eighties' other classic of violence, Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, The Girl Next Door is, in fact, based on a real occurrence. While Ketchum went back a bit in time (no doubt to draw the contrast of the fifties and the murder), there can be no doubt that The Girl Next Door is closely based on the case of Sylvia Marie Likens. And that, of course, makes it far more horrible than it already was.
The Girl Next Door really is the amazing piece of work Stephen King claims it is. Ketchum gets under the reader's skin in ways that few horror novels have ever been able to achieve, and the result is a stunning success. I suggest trying to hunt down a copy of the original paperback printing (on Warner Books) rather than trying to get ahold of the "affordable line" Overlook Connection trade paperback-- but however you get hold of it, do so. This is a book worthwhile at any price. *****
Summary of The Girl Next Door
Suburbia in the 1950s, a dark side emerging in the Chandler house for teenage Meg and her crippled little sister Susan --captive to an Aunt, who is rapidly descending into madness. "The Girl Next Door is alive.... in a way most works of poplular fiction never attain; it does not just promise terror but actually delievers it. But it's a page-turner, all right; no doubt about that." - Stephen KingHistorical Books
Book Subjects
- Arts & Photography
- Biographies & Memoirs
- Business & Investing
- Children's Books
- Comics & Graphic Novels
- Computers & Internet
- Cooking, Food & Wine
- Entertainment
- Gay & Lesbian
- Health, Mind & Body
- History
- Home & Garden
- Horror
- Law
- Literature & Fiction
- Mystery & Thrillers
- Nonfiction
- Outdoors & Nature
- Parenting & Families
- Professional & Technical
- Reference
- Religion & Spirituality
- Romance
- Science
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Sports
- Teens
- Travel
Most talked about in Historical Books
Pirate Latitudes: A Novelby Michael Crichton
Harper; Published: 2009-11-24; Roughcut; Book
Best price: $2.44
Price in other shops:
The Master Butchers Singing Club: A Novelby Louise Erdrich
Harper Perennial; Published: 2004-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.83
Price in other shops:
The Last Witchfinder: A Novelby James Morrow
William Morrow; Published: 2006-03-14; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $4.00
Price in other shops:
Zorroby Isabel Allende
HarperAudio; Published: 2005-05-03; Audio CD; Book
Best price: $3.05
Price in other shops:
The Hot Kid: A Novelby Elmore Leonard
William Morrow; Published: 2005-05-01; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $2.89
Price in other shops:
The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Chronicles Series #1)Mass Market Paperback; Book
Bones of the Hills (Conqueror, Book 3)by Conn Iggulden
Harper Collins Canada; Published: 2008; Hardcover; Book
Best price: $44.70
Marchby Geraldine Brooks
Penguin Books; Published: 2006; Paperback; Book
Gates of Rome (Emperor 1)by Conn Iggulden
Harpercollins Pb; Published: 2003-09-01; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.80
Girl With a Pearl Earringby Tracy Chevalier
Harper Collins Audio; Published: 2002-06-17; Audio Cassette; Book
Best price: $86.82
Similar Books and other products
The Lostby Jack Ketchum
Leisure Books; Published: 2008-04; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.00
Price in other shops:
Blindness (Harvest Book)by Jose Saramago
Harvest Books; Published: 1999-10-04; Paperback; Book
Best price: $2.74
Price in other shops:
Requiem for a Dream: A Novelby Hubert Selby Jr.
Da Capo Press; Published: 2000-08-15; Paperback; Book
Best price: $8.49
Price in other shops:
Offspringby Jack Ketchum
DP; Published: 2011-05-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $6.15
Price in other shops:
Hide and Seekby Jack Ketchum
Gauntlet Pr; Published: 2007-11-05; Paperback; Book
Best price: $9.97
Price in other shops:
House of Evil: The Indiana Torture Slaying (St. Martin's True Crime Library)by John Dean
St. Martin's True Crime; Published: 2008-07-29; Mass Market Paperback; Book
Best price: $3.92
Price in other shops:
The Womanby Jack Ketchum, Lucky McKee
DP; Published: 2011-05-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.00
Off Seasonby Jack Ketchum
DP; Published: 2011-05-02; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.88
Price in other shops:
Right to Life: And 2 New Storiesby Jack Ketcham
Gauntlet Press; Published: 2002-03; Paperback; Book
Best price: $10.19
Price in other shops:
The Girl Next DoorABE; Release date: 2007-12-04; DVD
Best price: $4.40
Price in other shops: