Review: Make yourself at home...
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 10 4, 2012
For a while now I've been thinking that Scott Nicholson was styling himself to be the horror genre's answer to a Sharyn Mccrumb drag queen.  His soft and eerie countrified rambles - THE RED CHURCH, THE HARVEST, THE MANOR - all magnificent tales spun and sung in fine and high Appalachian style; were in danger of painting the man into a corner with a fat mass-market-paperback-sized paintbrush and a uniform coat of runny milk paint.  Like listening to a three-chord Eric Frampton concert, the man was developing a style that was veering towards the comfortably predictable.I don't rightly know if this would have been a fate worse than death in my eyes.  I like his stuff, just fine.  I don't think you need to mess with the flavor of beer, and country mash whiskey is best sipped straight.  Still, the creative spirit is a little like a running stream.  It needs to keep moving to avoid stagnancy.  So I was glad to find Nicholson's new book, THE HOME, demonstrates a healthy momentum and a truly different style than his earlier works.It's told mostly from the eyes of Freeman Mills, a twelve year old troubled youth, freshly arrived at Wendover, a home for hard cases.  Freeman hides behind the masks of old movies, staring at the world through an Eastwood squint, practising his John Wayne growl, a face for everyone but himself.  Freeman has a troubled history.  His father raised him like a lab rat in a series of Skinner-box experiments that triggered an innate ability to "triptrap" or read other people's minds.Freeman's transfer has been orchestrated by Dr. Richard Kracowski, who is studying the effects of electromagnetism on the electrical properties of the human mind.  Can you say mad scientist, boys and girls?Kracowski makes reanimator Herbert West look like a warm and understanding human spirit.  Kracowski works for a secret society called The Trust, that's kind of a mix between the CIA, the Illuminati, and the Men In Black.  Of course, Kracowski has his own agenda, (what mad scientist doesn't?), and there are other hands at work pulling the strings.Freeman's doing his best to pass the time.  His coping gives the novel a real Shawshank Redemption/Cool Hand Luke kind of feel to it.  To complicate matters, Kracowski's frigging (technical term) with the magnetic waves has an unexpected side effect.  The dead of the local area are coming back.  Spirits from Wendover's earlier years as a mental asylum are prowling about causing trouble in a number of different ways.  Freeman's abilities are not unique.  A young anorexic, Vicky, befriends Freeman, and shares her secret with him.  She's telepathic as well.  Things heat up when the other children begin developing their own psychic abilities.  The Trust steps up their research, installing larger and more dangerous devices in the basement of Wendover, and things really come to a boil when another scientist is brought in - the father of Freeman Mills.This is a fun read and a fast ride.  Fans of a more "talky" style of writing, ala Stephen King and Richard Laymon, will really dig THE HOME.  It reminded me a lot of another book I reviewed elsewhere, Tim Lebbon's DESPARATION, only minus the Kafkaesque angst.  THE HOME is aimed towards fans of Buffy and The O.C.  There's very little poetry in this book.  Less lyricism, and more vernacular.  It sags a bit in the middle, but that's always hard going for any writer.  The fourth quarter of the novel picks up speed and snowballs, until you'll find yourself burning skidmarks in your fingertips attempting to speed read.  A satisfying slambang finale, with a suitable bit of soft teenage angst thrown in.You'll be glad you picked this book up.  I still hope Nicholson doesn't forget his lonely Appalachian voice, but it pleased me to hear him trying on a brand new creative style.I recommend it.  Give it a read.