Ghost Story (Paperback)

"I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing" This is how the book opens and comes to life. Boy, does it ever! I first read "Ghost Story" 22 years ago when I was 17 years old. I remember the movie coming out shortly after I read it. The movie version is okay, but really chops up the book. Where is the Lewis Benedikt character in the movie? ... and Edward Wanderly is the mayor of Milburn? No, I'm not going to do a review of the movie, but I must say, that if you really want to enjoy this classic book called "Ghost Story", by all means, read the book where the characters are so rich and full of life.

In Milburn, New York, Ricky Hawthorne, Sears James, Edward Wanderly, Lewis Benedikt and John Jaffrey are young friends on their way to professions in law and medicine. They accidentally kill a woman named Eva Galli. This group living in the 1920s panic and they decide the only thing they can do, cover up Eva's death. They put her "dead" body in a car that was loaned to them and together, push the vehicle into a lake. When the car is sinking they notice something that will haunt them for the rest of their lives. Eva moves ("Jesus, she can't, she's dead!"). But yes, it appears that Eva is still alive and they see that she is grinning at them from the rear view window. Grinning! In the book, "Ghost Story" is a tale of supernatural revenge and the Eva Galli character is indeed very evil.

Return 50 years later to Milburn. The group of men are now called the Chowder Society. They have regular meetings and swap Ghost Stories, but have vowed not to speak of Eva Galli and her death. Suddenly, Edward Wanderly dies while interviewing a young actress named Anne-Veronica Moore at a party hosted by John Jaffrey. Edward apparently dies of fright. The remaining members of the Chowder Society are possessed by terrible nightmares where they die. They send for Edwards's young nephew, Don Wanderly, who is a writer of horror novels. Don wrote a recent book called "The Nightwatcher" based, we learn later, on his own experiences with Eva, known to him as Alma Mobley.

Peter Straub wrote a very cerebral book. Ghosts, known in the book as shape shifters, are entities that have been around when humans first began to gather knowledge. "We (Alma talking to Don inside one of Don's hallucinations) have always lived in your dreams and in your worst nightmares" ... the most dreadful thing!

5 Stars!

This is Straub's most intricate, atmospheric, and satisfying novel, constructed as a highly convoluted Chinese puzzle-box of interlocking stories, with a single underlying, unifying theme. The Chowder Society gather together to tell ghost stories, all centered around exorcizing an unexplainable series of events from their collective youth, which appears to be the root cause of the nightmare events in their little town, not to mention their own lives. "What's the most terrible thing you've ever done?" is the question they continually ask each other. "I won't tell you that," is their pat club answer, "but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing..." From this, Straub derives his springboard of individual ghost and horror stories, pondering the origin of all humanity's nightmares - and explains them with a uniquely novel answer, better discovered by the reader for himself than revealed (beware, some of the reviews below contain spoilers).

Straub generally demands great patience of his readers, and such is the case here, but he pays off in spades for those who stay the course. The style is occasionally a bit over-the-top, but it achieves the desired effect.

I've read this book a few times, and enjoy it more with successive readings. It's a brilliant piece. Very involving, endlessly fascinating, and scary as frozen hell for the holidays.

Treat yourself. Don't miss it.

In addition, I found the writing to be juvenile. When I was in grade school, my best friend and I used to write our own fantasy / horror stories for our English classes. When reading Ghost Story, I felt like I was reading one of our stories!

Reading Ghost Story was laborious. I found the book to be incredibly slow and an overall tedious read. Towards the end, I was almost pulling my hair out because I just wanted to finish the darned thing. Moreover, I didn't find the story to be scary like the book reviews indicated it would be. There were scary moments, of course (like about 2), but, overall, it just didn't grab me.

The aspects that I DID like about the book concerned its characters. I found Sears to be a humorous, sarcastic old man. Don was a cool dude, too. The steamy love scenes between Don and Alma were worth writing home about also.

The ending, though, was just......dumb. Juvenile. Stupid.
Overall, I would say that I didn't like this book. It sounds like the movie version is better than the book. I bought Shadowland, also by Straub, at a used book store. I hope that it will be better than Ghost Story.