Review: See a Clown; Be a Clown
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 31, 2014
In his entertainingly creepy short story, "Bobo," Richard Schiver takes maximum advantage of a seemingly bizarre paradox: clowns can be very scary. Stephen King demonstrated this fact over several hundred pages in his classic "It," but Schiver manages to do so in an extremely effective 20 pages here."Bobo" is the story of a woman with lots of problems, beginning with the fact that she's been kidnapped and is being held for ransom by a group of professionals. To make matters worse, she is about to divorce her husband, and she senses that her husband has no intention of paying the ransom, because if the kidnappers kill her, then her husband won't have to pay out a divorce settlement. To cope with the situation, she retreats into her childhood and recalls one of her favorite memories, that of a clown doll named Bobo, as well as a number of less pleasant memories.Schiver is quite an accomplished story teller, and he manages to reveal a great deal of information in some 20 pages without the plot feeling too densely detailed. This is the rare story that could easily have been expanded into a novel but that nonetheless, is very effective as a short story.The story is told exclusively from this woman's point of view, and the storyline deliberately wanders back and forth between the present and various times in the past. It's an effective way of demonstrating the woman's confusion and desperation,  but most readers should still be able to figure out what's happening in the present and what did happen in the past. Still, Schiver's style manages to be just disconcerting enough that the reader is never quite certain about what's real and what's not ... until the end.Although this is an effectively creepy tale, because of the rather fantastic kidnapping premise, it's not a story that's going to be etched into anyone's memory. This raises the issue of whether there's enough value in these 20 pages to justify paying money for, if the author charges for it (I got the story for free as a promotion so I didn't have that problem). For some people, this one is a close call, and, if they have to pay for the story, some readers may not feel this slight tale is worth it. I personally really enjoyed Schiver's offbeat storytelling style and remarkable efficiency, as well as the way the story unfolded. For those reasons, I'd rate this one at 3 1/2 stars, rounded up to 4 based on the slick quality of the storytelling.