Customer Reviews

Shella

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ghost promises to kill Shella's father. He tells her this. It is so romantic you weep when you read it. Vachss writes crisp. So sharp it cuts your mind. He creates characters with such depth they are bottomless. They are bottomless because the depths of human depravity is bottomless. You like Ghost by the end of the book. Hell, you like him at the beginning. To label him an antihero belittles his character, just as labeling him a murderer belittles his actions. It would be accurate but not accurate. He does kill. A lot. But there is no emotion in it. He is like a weapon. Neither truly good nor truly evil. Simply there. Waiting to have its sights locked and its trigger pulled. But Ghost, John, whatever his name, doesn't need anyone to justify his actions. He doesn't care about those things. All he cares about is Shella. He will go to hells without number to find her if necessary. And it is necessary. I don't know if one could call what he feels for Shella love. I don't know what it is. Love doesn't exist where he and Shella are. It never did and never will. But the closest word that describes it is love. Does love exist in hell? You'd have to ask Ghost. Perhaps that is what Vachss wants to tell a story about. Maybe he wants to show us what true love is like in true hell.

This story, about a soulless man's obsessive search for the woman he loves, is a dark, disturbing nightmare of a book. It shows in graphic detail what this world can do to those unfortunate lost children crushed by the cruelty of the world. Recommended for readers with steely nerves.

With "Shella," Vachss strips the narrative down even further than in his Burke novels. The first-person delivery rivals Forrest Gump.

The coverflap lays it out. Ghost is (metaphorically) an alligator; his body and skills have grown during captivity, but his soul is crippled in its youth. With "no experience of nurture or education," he becomes a bare-hands killer with no sense that lives might matter beyond their bounty. The hardback edition features a drawing of an alligator. The corners of the page show a diamond, a spade and a club...no heart. After Ghost's last prison term, he needs to find Shella, the "sole witness to his own humanity." If she's gone, Ghost loses his only evidence of hope in human connection.

The plot involves no self-discovery. Other killers help him find Shella and he helps them by infiltrating a white supremacist stronghold and closing in on the leader. The events serve a cautionary theme. When Ghost (more than once) shows a steadiness and strength of hand ideal for a life-giving surgeon, it's too late for that. When Shella and Ghost reunite, it's also too late.

"Shella" is a sad picture of what people become, by society's doing and by their own. Shella and Ghost weren't torn apart from each other. They were each torn apart when they met, and needed each other to become more or less whole. This is Vachss' best example of dead souls still walking around, playing their roles. An alligator has no greater destiny than One More Day...

All of Andrew Vachss's early novels depict a New York City underbelly of infinite danger and infinite twisted evil... they make for terrifying reads. But for me, and other Vachss readers I've spoken with, SHELLA is the absolute peak of relentless horror. Probably only Vachss could create a situation where a child-like killer searches for the only woman who was ever kind to him, and at novel's end when he finds her, her first words to him are: "Please, KILL ME! " And during the search the main character, Ghost, encounters people and situations that would make Burke's usual enemies look like the regulars at the Tuesday Night sewing circle at a Methodist Church. If you read only one novel by Vachss this should be it.

...the finest love story written.

While many see the darkness of Vachss' work, this book shows the "love" that drives Ghost's search for the only thing he really needs...Shella.

This is the greatest book I've ever read. The first time I read this book I literally couldn't put it down. The writing style is like a punch to the face. I cried at the end. I've since read it several more times. I've never been able to stop in the middle without reading it all the way through. I still cry at the end.

All I can say: I started drinking my drinks in two glasses and watched TV whithout sound after I went through this book. Every men loves Ghost eventhough he's a killer.

My favorite of Vachss' novels. The character of Ghost is a fascinating, compelling caraciture of abuse and its sustained effects on children. A very disturbing, violent tale, but ultimately thought-provoking. Vachss is pretty heavy-handed as writers go, though I doubt the man even considers himself an author per se. Rather, I've always gotten the sense he thinks of himself as a "preacher" of sorts -- spreading his particular gospel. When you are trying to save souls, a lack of subtlety is excusable and warranted.

The point of this novel (and, in fact, most all of Vachss' work) can be summed up by recalling the words of the killer, Wesley, in another of the author's novels:

"You do things to us. We grow up and do things to you."

"Shella" is one of the best novels I've ever read. It's a no-nonsence book with a moral twist and characters I can relate to. Although Shella herself turns out to be a real bitch, John and Misty are victims of the world around them. I feel pity as well as admirement for the pair. I think "Shella" is the only book I've read over a dozen times. It's writing style is bs-free and wraps the storyline in a nice package altogether. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys stories that tell it like it is. I find it to be more a diary than a memoir. Often as I read this book I can't help but wonder how the characters would have turned out if their childhoods were troubleless and futures bright. I feel as if I know them myself. They remind me of real people I know. Overall, this is my favourite book out of all the ones I've ever read, and believe me, I've read plenty.

The Village Voice review excerpt, straight from the back of the novel, reads: "A noir archetype as bare as unfinished furniture. The plot...has been sanded down into a taut monofilament... The prose in Shella is boiled to the bone."

At first, after reading this novel (in about 3 hours), I thought "Hell, anybody can get pretty reviews to paste on the back of their book," and then I read it again (the review, not the novel) and decided that "as bare as unfinished furniture" wasn't really much of a compliment, after all.

As exciting as unfinished furniture. Vachss has no real depth.