Review: "A Dark Matter" by Peter Straub

This was my first venture into Peter Straub haunting and menacing world, and I have been missing a lot. He is probably the second most well-known American horror writer, next to Stephen King, obviously, and both represent, through their writings a certain kind of mindset and experience that is characteristic of modern life. But while Stephen King embraces the modern age in the way his sentences are put together in a simple way and contain modern pop culture references, Straub is of the old school of a Lovecraft or Poe, where tension and atmosphere work to give the reader the kind of nightmares that remain with them even when you wake up and the sun is shining. Both styles kind of compliment each other (they wrote two books together) but they remain very different from each other, and I like them both for what each one does to push the boundaries of what can scare us. This novel, his most recent, begins when Lee Harwell, a famous author, overhears a crazed maniac spouting gibberish in coffee shop he is eating at. The man’s ramblings activate the memories he has of the time in college during the 60’s when his group of friends, one of which became his wife, fell under the spell of a guru named Spencer Mallon. This parasitic relationship ended with a botched séance in a meadow that resulted in one of the member’s horrible dismemberment. Lee does not know what exactly happened on that infamous night. And now, forty years later, a determined Lee is going to find out what happened, and his journey will bring him into contact with the sad lives his friends now lead, and the terrible possibility of what might happen to him. This novel works in a similar way to a novel I read earlier this year called Slippin’ into Darkness by Norman Partridge, but this is a lot more slick and while that book was very gritty and nasty. It essentially is part of a sub-genre of fiction called ‘the nostalgic death trip”. These kinds of stories/novels deal with a past that is at the same time unattainable and actively destroying the people that are a part of it. They are changed for the worst by a past event, yet they, of course, cannot do anything about it.  I like these stories a lot because the morals in each one ring very true to life, and they are always chock-full of cool plot twists. The people in the novel’s situation, whether they are committed to an insane asylum, or have become a horribly empty person who destroys anyone’s life the happen to come in contact with. A series of stories told by those involved lead Lee to the truth of what happened that night, and it is a truth that is represents a painful sense of change while also coming with a sense of joy and hopefulness. But a lot of this stories magic is in getting to that truth. I highly recommend this novel by a bona-fide horror master. I eagerly await many more trips to his dark and mysterious universes.

Rating: 5/5