Saturday, June 23, 2012

Review: "The Doll Who Ate His Mother" by Ramsey Campbell



Ramsey Campbell is one of the most prolific Horror authors living today, along with Stephen King, Clive Barker or Peter Straub, but he does not nearly have the name power of those two, and by reading his first novel The Doll Who Ate His Mother, I can kind of see why. Campbell’s brand of horror is not the kind that is plot driven or violence driven. It is more focused on creating a sense of dread or terror for whomever is reading it by creating a creepy atmosphere much like Lovecraft. And for the most part he does it very, very well, making him a truly talented writer where some are just really good storytellers. His prose is very neat and tight on a word for word basis, but in large chunks a lot of the important details get lost in the fancy descriptions, and he has a great tendency to be very slow when the reader desperately wants him to move fast. This novel starts out really cool, with a truly creepy event involving Clare, our heroine, and her brother getting into a car crash caused by a guy who would not get out of the road. In the aftermath, her brother’s arm disappears and he ends up dying. A few months later, a sleazy crime novelist insists on her help when he thinks the guy might be the culprit. Them, along with a theater owner whose mother also may have died at the hands of this madman and a wannabe hippie whose cat was a victim, enter into a world of voodoo, occult and some seriously disturbing pregnancies. The little moments are what make the book effective, but as a whole it is very confusing and hard to put together. In the end, this is a very unique experience from a true horror master, but not a great one.
Rating: 4/5

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