Review: "Foe" by Iain Reid

Even more than a year after reading it, Iain Reid’s first novel I’m Thinking of Ending Things still haunts me. It’s quiet power, and it’s subtle dread are like guideposts to my most worried and fevered nightmares that both scare me and draw me in and make me look a little more deeply at my personal fears. And with his second novel Foe, Reid seems to be at the helm of this new kind of horror, one not built on monsters in closets or maniacs with sharp objects and instead built around some of our most fundamental and terrifying questions like: what is my place in the world? What am I to those around me, to the ones that I love? And most of all: is life and everything in it worth anything more than what we prescribe to it. These are questions I think all of us ask ourselves when we are alone in the middle of night and they are questions we really do not have any answers for, at least ones that are intrinsic. And Reid confronts these questions in weirdly wonderful ways that are both scary but also undeniably heartfelt. This second novel is a change of pace from his last one with a more tangible plot and it’s events a little less shrouded in ambiguity, but still cloaked in a web of terrifying mystery. It focuses on a couple, Junior and Henrietta, a couple in the near future who live an isolated life on a farm. One night, they are visited by mysterious man named Terrance, who says he works for a company that is exploring the possibilities of space travel. He says that Junior has been selected from a lottery he was not made aware of to be shipped into space and stay there for years at a time. But in his place, Terrance says, will be a replicant of Junior, whom Terrance promise will be exactly like him. The majority of the novel deals with the implications of such circumstances. Henrietta becomes distant and morose, a state heightened once Terrance comes to live with the couple once Junior has been selected. Terrance is the closest thing this book has to a boogeyman. His motives are never made clear. He is oddly polite but bureaucratic in his duty to his company, and every word he speaks makes your skin crawl. Reid’s dialogue is effortless and real, making us care for the strange plight of these two individuals and giving the weight of what is going on a horrifying absoluteness. Reading through this, this felt more like a speculative fiction story than a horror story like Reid’s first novel, and that is a good thing. Instead of thinking of Ramsey Campbell I was thinking of the late Harlan Ellison and stories like “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” where realty is skewed in brutal yet unnoticeable ways. It’s ending is not as impactful as his first, but the lingering sense of unease it will illicit out of some after reading the last few pages is one they, and certainly I, won’t forget so soon. 

Rating: 5/5

Review: "I'm Thinking of Ending Things" by Iain Reid

Some books simply strike a chord with you. You can’t help it. Even if it’s a terribly flawed work, you can’t help but see a little bit of yourself in it. Thankfully, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, the deliciously and infectiously creepy debut novel from Iain Reid, is not one of those works. It affected me rather deeply, in a way that makes me feel more than a bit changed, and yes, even a bit scared too, but it did such a thing to me in the guise of an expertly routed thriller that grabs you by the throat and quietly whispers nasty things into your ear. On the front flap, it compares it to two recent novels that bridge the gap between the literary and thriller genre: Michel Faber’s Under the Skin and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. While those are two of my favorite books, each with its own nasty surprises, I didn’t think too much about them over the two sittings I spent with this book. What really came to mind, especially since this author seems to where its horror genre roots proudly on its sleeve, were the novels of English horror author Ramsey Campbell and a handful of Harlan Ellison short stories; quiet horror stories with dread that covertly infects the reader until the final, heart-stopping twist. This is one of the best horror novels I have read in such a long time, one that doesn’t have a drop of blood (actually, just one), and relies heavily on mood, atmosphere and an ever increasing nightmarish reality. It is going to be hard to review such a book without spoiling anything, because the deeper this book gets, the clearer its intentions are, but I will try my best. It starts on a dark country road on an impossibly dark night. Our unnamed female narrator is in a car being driven by her boyfriend Jake. They are on their way to meet Jake’s parents for the first time. Off in the distance, she sees an abandoned farmhouse with what seems like a brand new swing set out in front. She asks about this but Jake deflects her questions. From this, we know something is not right, and we know whatever is going on is disturbing and uncomfortable, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how sad it was going to be. We learn a little about our unnamed narrator, we learn she intends to dump Jake soon, we learn she met him at a trivia night at a pub and we learns she has a past of her own, and a story she tells of waking up as a young kid to find a man standing at her window is chilling rendered. The story goes deeper and deeper, until someone finds themselves locked in an old labyrinthine school, where this book’s dark and somber heart is laid bare. This book was a timely read for me, as it put me face to face with some problems of my own, the areas where I need to grow but seem destined to be stuck in. While I won’t go as far as to say it exorcised me, I did find a perverse comfort and sense of self-reflection in its final pages. Even if this boom doesn’t do that for, it is a brilliant and impressively laid out thriller with teeth and a surprising and astounding emotional impact.

Rating: 5/5