Review: A nasty little gothic gem!
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 30, 2013
There's a reason that people stopped writing epistolary fiction and other "found" novels after the 1800s. They're awkward. It's not O'Rourke's fault exactly that it pulls me out of a story to think that specific dialogue is not something a kid would remember when he's confessing a crime to a tape recorder. After all, we make concessions like this for stories told this way.I'll think, "Okay, he just recalled a big string of dialogue verbatim. In real life, no one repeats dialogue complete with tags when he's talking, but this is a book, and I do want to know what the characters said, so I'll let it slide."Except for the fact that one begins to wonder why the author chose to tell the story as a tape recorded conversation in the first place. Perhaps he wanted to give the story a bit of realism. But when the guy who's writing supposed "notes" on the crime recounts in detail pulling aside the plastic on a tray of food he's about to microwave, one's suspension of disbelief is really stretched. Who makes notes about microwaving food when he's interviewing a suspect? No one. At which point, I'm reminded that I actually am reading a novel, and any semblance of realism is crushed.SPOILERSOf course, one could argue that all of it makes perfect sense since the investigator's off his noggin, and the guy giving the interview is some kind of ghost thing, but since the ending was positively silly, let's just not go there./SPOILERSAs I said, though, the limits of the convention aren't specifically O'Rourke's fault. He may have been better off with a straight narrative, given that narrating a "found" novel is tricky, but he probably intended it as a bit of homage to Wuthering Heights, which is a "found" novel of journal entries which asks the reader to believe not only that Nelly remembers verbatim a letter written by Isabella, but that Lockwood remembers Nelly's retelling verbatim and then sets it down in his journal. And no one faults poor Ms. Bronte for that bit of idiocy, do they? (Of course, she's dead now. Maybe people would consider it uncharitable.) The long and the short of it is that I'm probably being too hard on O'Rourke. Because, believe it or not, with the exception of the ending--which was positively ludicrous in a and-then-he-woke-up-and-it-was-all-a-dream way--I really did enjoy his novel.Black Hill Farm is a tidy bit of nastiness which takes its cues from the gothicism of Wuthering Heights. It's not a true retelling, not exactly, but it was the similarity of the plot description that led me to pick up the book in the first place. I was quite gratified, midway through, when O'Rourke acknowledged Wuthering Heights with a clever nod.After the death of his parents, Ben is taken in by his uncle, and begins to form an overly close relationship with his cousin Andrea--nicknamed Andy. Andy is rather obviously somewhat mentally off. Her way of flirting is to set Ben up to take the fall for her when she sneaks drinking and smoking pot, and then tell him, "I can tell you're loyal to me." Ben finds her both frightening and alluring, as is the way with forbidden incestuous loves of this kind. Of course, before long, he's devoted enough to her that he doesn't stop things when her father commits suicide, and Andy insists they drag his bloody corpse up to his bed because he's "just resting."Add in a rich neighbor trying to buy up Andy's land, the mysterious demise of Andy's own mother, and plenty of gothic intrigue, and you've got an excellent little story in the making.I loved that it was gory. I loved the forbidden love. I loved the mystery, which unfolded very nicely. The blood-soaked body-strewn climax pitched a perfect line between horror, intensity, and sick humor. It was everything a modern gothic mystery should be.(Well, except for the ending, but I'm just pretending that didn't happen.)Overall, I really enjoyed it, but I won't be moving onto to the sequel considering it seems more focused on the investigator whose notes form the frame story, and I was more drawn to the characters of Ben and Andy.I would recommend it to others who enjoy their gothics on the disturbing side. All told, quite a bit of fun!