The Night Country
Stewart O’Nan
Picador
Trade Paper, 240 pages, $14.00
Review by Sheila Merritt

“The night is young and there’s candy for everyone. No wonder we love Halloween so much; for one night it lets us pretend we’ll get everything we want.” Stewart O’Nan succinctly articulates the joy and peril of embracing a holiday tradition which connects the young with the young at heart. In his novel The Night Country, O’Nan scrutinizes the fictional New England town of Avon. A year after a tragic car accident, which claims the lives of three teenagers and dramatically alters the lives of the two survivors, a haunting is taking place. The haunted are, of course, survivors. Not only the two young men whose lives were spared, but also parents, friends, and those with a guilty conscience. Some guilt is more substantive, but all suffer.

Narrated primarily by ghost Marco, with some added commentary by ghosts Danielle and “Toe” (Christopher), the observations about the living are smart, apt, and full of attitude and angst. This chorus of narrators has been called back by the sadness, regret, and remorse of those they left behind. This is a haunting by mutual consent. One year after the car crash at midnight on Halloween, the dead youths have become “everyone’’s lost children, everyone’’s best friends.” It does not comfort them. To be “eternally seventeen” may be the goal of many, but for the kids who died it is not considered a gift.

Dying young is a romantic conceit. The two survivors of the crash, Tim and Kyle, have to deal with the reality of not dying with their contemporaries. Kyle is mentally impaired as a result of the accident. The once edgy, drug using, hipster is reduced to a challenged child like status. His mother, who devotes her life to caring for him, thinks “Life would go on. That’s the worse thing. All around her are things existing dumbly — squirrels and trees and bushes — and she resents them. She can’t help it.”

Tim has even more of a problem than Kyle: His memory is profoundly intact. He works with Kyle, although they obviously attend different schools. In addition, Danielle was his girlfriend. She was sitting on his lap when the crash occurred. He lives through the year of the accident by looking at photos, playing the music that reawakens the event, and never letting go of the fact/guilt that he is alive.

One other figure plays prominently throughout the scenario: The cop Brooks, who has documented and revisited again and again the scene of the lethal accident. Brooks is a broken man. His marriage is shattered, his career shaky. The demographics of Avon are shifting, and he feels lost: “Everyone seems to be pressing him, leaving him behind, as if he’’s stuck in yesterday. It’s like living in another world, a vampire life.”

These characters, and some others, meet again on the anniversary of the crash. There is resolution; an arc is fulfilled. Still, there is the reminder that the living can be ghosts as much as those who have died. There is always a question about the reason or cause of a haunting.

Author Stewart O’Nan calls himself a horror writer, but his novels have not been marketed within the genre. He has a love for horror; each chapter of The Night Country is named after a scary movie. He references pop culture terrors, and infuses his tale with a youthful exuberance that embraces thrills and fears like an angst ridden teenager.

In this profoundly disturbing, but not particularly scary novel, O’Nan treads into Shirley Jackson territory. The emphasis is on unease, vulnerability of fragile psyches, and atmosphere. He has created, along with Jackson, one of the best opening paragraphs in horror. Here’s just a taste: “COME, DO YOU HEAR IT? The wind — murmuring in the eaves, scouring the bare trees. How it howls, almost musical, a harmony of old moans. The house seems to breathe, an invalid. Leave your scary movie marathon; this is better than TV. Leave the lights out.”

It is easy to enter The Night Country. Escaping it is a different matter; particularly on Halloween.

Note: This is the Hellnotes contribution to The Halloween Book Review Project which was proposed by Dylan at MonsterLibrarian.com. You can read the other reviews from participating websites by clicking on the links below. But before you do, please let me give a big thanks to Sheila Merritt for contributing the above review. That’s her in the photograph, all dressed up and reading The Night Country. She’’s a fantastic reviewer and we”re honored to be able to carry her reviews in Hellnotes. Thanks, Sheila!

The Monster Librarian
Reviews Ghost Walk by Brian Keene and Bound For Evil by Tom English

Horror World
Reviews Masks by Ray Bradbury, Plus Other Titles

Horror Web
Reviews Meat by Joseph D”Lacey, Maneater by Thomas Emson, and Like A Chinese Tattoo

Horror Drive-In
Reviews Miranda by John Little

Dark Scribe Magazine
Reviews The Book of Lists: Horror and Covenant by John Everson

Fear Zone
Reviews Hallowe’en by Lisa Morton and Moontown by Peter Atkins