Review: It's Unluckier Than E18teen
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 04 30, 2014
Aaron Patterson, author of a number of popular hardboiled thrillers, tries for a change of pace in "N19eteen," a supernatural short story that is somehow billed as a medical thriller. Although it's far from a medical thriller, the story can be described in medical terms as a botched operation.The bulk of the story concerns a middle aged woman who understandably gets quite worried when her husband is admitted to the hospital a few days before Christmas. However, it's not just the potential seriousness of her husband's condition that worries her. No, she encounters some bad omens that convince her that her hubby is doomed. And it's not just one omen, it's a whole bunch of them. For starters, she smells roses when there's no roses around. That's apparently a sign that someone in her family is about to die unexpectedly because all the women in her family have experienced the same thing. Then her husband has a stroke at 2:22 in the afternoon. That's a bad sign because bad things always happen in her family when the time is three identical digits. And he suffered the stroke on the 19th of December... another bad omen. And there's a mysterious woman wandering around the corridors of the hospital, which can't be good. Somehow, no one in the story walked under a ladder or broke a mirror, but just about every other ominous event that could have occurred did occur.I won't spoil the ending of the story but I will say that it's not likely anyone reading the story is going to be surprised. Author Patterson is going for a seriously spooky story here, but his overabundance of bad signs turns the story into borderline farce. There obviously are some serious emotions at play here as the family tries to gather at the Christmas season to offer love and support to a beloved husband and father who may not be around much longer. A couple of passages in the story suggest the emotional power that situation could have. Unfortunately, rather than let the family's emotions play out naturally under those difficult circumstances, Patterson invariably offers another supernatural portent that breaks the mood. In a story that's barely 20 pages long, these mood breaks are fatal. The story's potentially powerful climax will probably have no effect whatsoever on most readers.The story is also burdened by an awkwardly elaborate framing device. The first couple of pages in the story take place in 1935 and then the bulk of the story takes place in 1975. The woman who narrates most of the the story does so in the form of a manuscript that, in the present day, she sends to a noted author who she knew years earlier and whom she hopes will publish the story if it's interesting. This framing device is awkward and completely unnecessary and makes it more difficult for readers to figure out just who's talking and why the story hops from one time frame to another. The framing device sorts itself out after a few pages, but that confusion also hinders the emotional impact of the story.Author Patterson claims this story is true and actually happened to some friends of his. However, instead of telling the story in a straightforward manner and keeping the supernatural elements in proper perspective, he turns it into a three-ring circus of premonitions and occult signposts. Even if his source claimed the story took place exactly as Patterson related it, an experienced author should have known better than to keep ladling on the supernatural story elements to the point of silliness. At its core, "N19eteen" contains an emotionally powerful story about life, love, and the beyond... unfortunately, that story gets lost in the ghostly fog of impending doom and gloom that Patterson chose to create.