Apartment 16by Adam Nevill
pub: Pan
I don't read a lot of horror as a rule but I am a sucker for a haunted house and Apt 16 sounded like a real treat. I should have read this in one sitting or a weekend at most, but it's been a bit of an odd week so it took me several days to finish. The result of this was several days of weird dreams and disturbed sleep. I blame you Adam Nevill for my being grumpy and tired all week, and for falling asleep at my desk. I guess that means it worked. Also, I loved it!!
The basic premise is traditional enough, Barrington House, an apartment building in London full of wealthy and elderly residents has a locked apartment and a dark secret. Number 16 is never to be opened. The building has trouble keeping night staff and Seth, the present night porter hears strange banging and whispering issuing from behind the locked door. Parrallel to Seth's story is that of Apryl, the attractive young woman who has come to settle her great aunt Lillian's estate and discovers disturbing diaries amongst the belongings. There is clearly a mystery to Lillian's life and to Barrington House and Apryl wants to get to the bottom of it before she returns to America.
The details are are what makes this story really different, really unusual. Seth's bleak vision of the "real" world, with the warped and twisted views of the imperfect flesh around him, the rotted food, the hooded child that haunts him are the elements that make A16 different. The use of language has been managed carefully, the characters that swear and what words they use, or the hooded boy's speech that stands out against the educated characters. Apryl's calm careful speech becomes more frantic in her conversations with Miles as she is drawn further into the mystery of Barrington House. The obsessive tones of the friends of Hessen, Nevill appears to be very aware of how speech fits to a character and feeds certain assumptions, helping to create a picture as much as the description.
Of the characters only Miles, who is fairly minor, is genuinely likeable, Apryl is quite manipulative and Seth who was never terribly pleasant gets worse. Oddly as Seth becomes more unpleasant and his actions more abhorrant it's almost easier to feel some empathy towards him. Apryl on the other hand becomes if anything less likeable as she becomes less an innocent bystander and more of an active protagonist. It's a subtle change deftly handled. I don't beleive horror is a genre where it is neccessary to identify with and like the characters to the same extent as in some genres, the haunted house is about the mystery and the fear which Adam delivers brilliantly right up to and beyond the ending.
There were plenty of twists I never saw coming and the darkness of the story was unrelenting while the madness built gradually, insidiously, taking the reader along as Apryl and Seth descend into their obsession and madness.
Cover your mirrors and dig out the nightlights, this one is creepy as hell.
8 comments:
So glad you enjoyed this book, Adele.
I didn't like the Miles character so much, too insipid for my liking. I felt much more of a kinship with Seth which probably speaks volumes about the varying levels of weirdness in my own head. Of all the horror I've read this year, British Horror in particular, Seth stands out as one of the most interesting and compelling.
Miles was dull but pleasant, you couldn't call anyone else really pleasant or normal. I know what you mean though and in spite of everything Seth was oddly sympathetic.
Oops! That last sentence should have read "compelling character"! I've been staring at the pc monitor far too long today, word blindness abounds. ;)
Yes, Miles was dull but pleasant, but characters like that often tend to be more "filler" than anything else. They have to be in there to move along certain elements of the story, I suppose, and I guess with Miles he was also needed to offset the outright nastiness of many of the other characters.
Still, I think Seth was, at heart, a likeable character who got himself dragged into the darkest of events.
Loved it soo much. Want to march everyone into waterstones and keep them there till they buy it. ;p
Oh dear, do you ever get that urge in Waterstones to stop people from buying bad books? Gently tap them on the shoulder and steer them in the direction of the "good stuff"?
Yup, all the time, I want to say "if you are looking for something in that vein, this is a billion times better" have on occasion. I have issues with impulse control.
I also but in when people say things like "my girlfriend really likes kelley armstrong and wants to try her other series but I don't see it here" and escort them away from the staff member and into the crime section. ;p
Yay! Glad you liked A16 Adele. It was really great to finally meet you at the signing as well.
Was lovely to meet you too love. :)
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