Cover blurbs on novels are often a form of hyperbole. They're sourced from best-selling authors like Janet Evanovich or Stephen King, as a shortcut to getting readers to plunk down their hard earned dollars for a book by a new writer. In the case of Shaun Hamill's A Cosmology of Monsters, King is quoted on the cover as saying "If John Irving ever wrote a horror novel, it would be something like this. I loved it." That description turns out to be perfectly accurate. Hamill's novel is a masterful blend of Irving's quirky stories with the unsettling horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. It's a terrific novel that is an atmospheric, haunting and emotional tale which both embraces and subverts the genres of family drama and horror.
A Cosmology of Monsters is narrated by Noah Turner, the youngest of three siblings. He and his sisters Eunice and Sydney, along with their parents Harry and Margaret, run a Halloween haunted house attraction that is one of the central metaphors of the novel. Part of Harry's courtship with Margaret involved the work of H.P. Lovecraft, and she cast aside another suitor to marry the somewhat ramshackle Harry. Much to Margaret's chagrin, his compulsion to continually expand their haunted house experience, eventually christened The Wandering Dark, becomes an obsession, and a source of conflict in their marriage. The portrayal and characterization of Harry and Margaret and their three children is very John Irving-esque. The Turner family could easily fit right into Irving's The Hotel New Hampshire, except for the fact that these quirky characters are dealing with emotions and experiences that will eventually become entwined with the supernatural.
Eunice is a budding writer, struggling with personal issues, whose "suicide notes" Noah relates to us throughout the novel. The other Turner sibling, Sydney, mysteriously disappears, and that event puts permanent cracks in the already shaky foundations of the family. Like his father Harry, who died when he was a toddler, Noah obsesses over making The Wandering Dark bigger and better, which brings him into conflict with his mother. He then quite literally meets a monster, who he discovers scratching at his window one night. The creature continues to visit, and the pair begin to take night-time jaunts around the neighborhood. The monster seems to be harmless, but there are sinister forces at work in the area. Other children are disappearing, just like Sydney. Noah begins to wonder if his shaggy friend may know more about the missing children, just as their relationship takes a surprising turn.
A Cosmology of Monsters is a compelling, powerful story of the things that haunt the Turner family, literally and figuratively. The characters struggle with problems that are quite relatable to us as readers, including the loss of a parent or sibling, making the wrong choice in a romantic partner, and dealing with depression and mental health issues. In a way, we're all haunted, but the Turners are literally tormented by their personal demons, which become intertwined with a powerful supernatural threat inspired by the otherworldly horror of H.P. Lovecraft. The dark and eerie forces in the novel are able to manipulate the Turners for their own ends, essentially turning their own troubled psyches against them. Were the Turners chosen at random by these evil forces, or was it their family's fate to be cursed? Someone will need to break the cycle of darkness that has long haunted the family. Will it be Noah?
Horror fiction has flourished in recent years, with writers like Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones and Sara Gran, among others, doing excellent work in the genre, and you can add Hamill's name to the list of talented new voices in the genre. A Cosmology of Monsters is brilliant combination of styles, melding the offbeat characters of a John Irving drama with moments of unsettling Lovecraftian horror, along a dash of Stephen King-esque eerieness. This thoughtful, emotionally driven book which features evocative moments of family drama entwined with harrowing moments of terror, will remain with you long after you close the pages. I highly recommend A Cosmology of Monsters to fans of the horror genre, and to those looking to add something a bit different for their reading list.
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