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ggcd1981's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
The Elementals de Michael McDowell foi um ótimo livro de terror Southern Gothic. Foi o primeiro livro em muito tempo que me deu um jump scare...bom, na verdade escava lendo uma parte especialmente tensa quando meu cachorro latiu e eu tive que me segurar para não gritar. O início dá o tom sinistro da obra, a família se reúne para um funeral privado. Marian Savage morreu, e é costume da família que seus funerais sejam privados e eles têm motivo. Os McCrays só estão presentes porque Leigh McCray se casou com um Savage, e ambas as famílias estão intimamente ligadas porque são coproprietárias de uma propriedade. O funeral termina com a tradição familiar mais perturbadora: os filhos de Marian enfiam uma adaga no coração de seu cadáver para certificar-se de que ela vai para a tumba realmente morta. Já foi um problema na família antes. Com a matriarca da rica família Savage morta, seu filho Dauphin, a pessoa mais bondosa do livro, e sua esposa Leigh, junto com a secretária doméstica afro-americana de longa data da família e a pessoa mais inteligente do livro, Odessa, a mãe de Leigh, "Big" Barbara McCray, o irmão Luker e a sobrinha India, decidem passar algumas semanas após o funeral em Beldame. Este é um local de férias na Costa do Golfo, propriedade conjunta há gerações das famílias Savage e McCray, consiste em três casas vitorianas idênticas em uma praia isolada que se torna uma ilha na maré alta. Das casas, uma é propriedade dos McCrays, uma dos Savages e a terceira casa está aparentemente desocupada desde que se lembram. Não só isso, mas está sendo lentamente engolida por uma enorme duna de areia. Algo mora lá, no entanto. E esse algo está envolvido há muito tempo na trágica história da família Savage. Beldame é o mesmo local em que Marian morreu sucumbindo ao câncer. Poucos personagens da família gostavam de Marian. Ela era horrível com seus dois filhos vivos, e o terceiro e mais velho saiu com seu barco a alguns anos e desapareceu perto de Beldame. O leitor passa a maior parte do tempo com India e seu pai Luker, dois dos McCrays que são as ovelhas negras da família porque moram em New York. Inicialmente duvidosa de passar o verão em uma pequena ilha costeira no Alabama, India é conquistada pelo encanto de Beldame. Quase imediatamente, ela questiona o pai sobre a terceira casa da ilha, onde ninguém vive. Ninguém quer falar sobre isso com India, e todos os outros membros da família parecem aceitar a ideia de deixar a natureza agir destruindo lentamente a casa abandonada. Assim como seu pai, Luker, que é fotógrafo profissional, India é uma amante da fotografia e decide que cabe a ela tirar fotos da terceira casa. Luker não mostra interesse nisso e não a incentiva a seguir com o plano. Eventualmente, Odessa, uma personagem importante na história pois parece saber mais do que se passa em Beldame e ter poderes psíquicos, decide responder algumas perguntas de India sobre a terceira casa e até a ajuda a tirar fotos. India desafiou o pai e subiu na duna da terceira casa para olhar diretamente para dentro, e é lá que ela vê algo que ela não consegue explicar, assim como seu pai quando era criança. Depois do encontro com o possivelmente sobrenatural, India evita a terceira casa por um tempo. A família se instala em uma rotina diária confortável e as semanas passam em lazer. Então, um dia, o patriarca e político dos McCrays, Lawton McCray, de repente aparece em Beldame e destrói a paz. Ele veio com um pedido para que todos voltassem para casa por alguns dias para que possam ajudá-lo em sua campanha. Ele também trouxe um homem para falar com os Savages para convencê-los a vender sua parte de Beldame, o que não agrada ao resto da família, já que Lawton quer isso para poder vender também a sua parte da ilha. De volta em casa, a família se revolta contra esse plano e decide que não vão concordar com esse esquema. Então, Lawton decide voltar furtivamente para Beldame para incendiar as casas, começando pela terceira casa. As entidades que Odessa chama de elementais o matam, e já que ele foi em segredo ninguém sabia que ele estava lá quando o resto da família retornou. Pouco depois desse retorno, é que coisas sobrenaturais verdadeiramente intensas começam a acontecer. A casa dos Savages é inexplicavelmente destruída pela areia, que parece vir do céu e consome a mansão. Convencida de que deveriam partir, a família fica presa por causa da maré alta, e quando um deles testa a água para ver se eles poderiam simplesmente nadar, eles descobrem que a água está fervendo. Finalmente, há um confronto com os elementais da terceira casa e Dauphin e Odessa são mortos. No entanto, com a nova visão obtida de Odessa – de uma forma canibal de transferência de poder - India come os olhos da mulher e consegue ajudar a si mesma, seu pai e os membros restantes da família a escapar de Beldame.
Esse foi um livro de terror muito bom. Os únicos pontos negativos foram: a relação entre os elementais e o histórico da família Savage não foi realmente bem estabelecido; a atitude inicial de India para com Odessa foi horrível. A garota não era acostumada a ter secretaria domestica e isso gerou uma atitude de antipatia e antagonismo que beirava o racismo e classismo; no final as melhores pessoas, Dauphin e Odessa, morreram, deixando os personagens mais cinzas vivos o que não me agradou. O livro teve elementos desafiadores, é um terror slow burn, e a forma como Luker trata a filha criança India como adulta inclusive a deixando consumir álcool e drogas é desconfortável para o leitor, mas no geral foi tenso e sinistro e me deixou interessada o tempo todo. Com certeza um dos melhores livros de terror que li, os positivos superam os negativos, dou 5 estrelas.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Alcoholism, Body horror, Child abuse, Death, Gore, Violence, Blood, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, Abandonment, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Child death, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Toxic relationship, Grief, Cannibalism, Gaslighting, and Classism
Minor: Racism
mandi_lea's review against another edition
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Animal death, Body horror, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Racism, Grief, Cannibalism, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
directorpurry's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Body horror, Gore, Cannibalism, and Fire/Fire injury
Minor: Child death
chalkletters's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
I’ve talked a lot about my lack of experience with horror, most recently in my review of Mexican Gothic, and I’m thrilled to finally be adding a pure horror novel to my sidebar of genres. The Elementals was still nothing like I expected a horror novel to be. Despite the presence of such legitimate, traditional horror elements as ghosts and animated corpses, I wasn’t frightened by Michal McDowell’s writing, I was just fascinated.
What’s most surprising about The Elementals was how nice everyone is. While the characters certainly have their quirks, most of the McCray and Savage family members who stay at Beldame are genuinely pleasant people who care about one another. It’s unexpectedly wholesome. Of course, despite the interesting family dynamics, characters being nice to each other isn’t enough to make a story interesting, which is where the third house comes in.
The third house, slowly being consumed by sand, doesn’t map to the archetype of a haunted house, but Michael McDowell certainly made it psychologically interesting. The adult characters’ unease about it, stemming from what they try to dismiss as the result of a childishly overactive imagination, contrasts to Odessa and India, whose shifting relationship was cleverly handled. Despite the hints of darkness, the intense love the characters felt for their location kept the atmosphere of The Elementalsquite light — but perhaps that was part of the setting’s malevolence, that it made people want to stay.
Odessa’s rituals, both in Beldame and Mobile, felt like a window into another culture, adding to the intrigue. Michael McDowell weaved a lot of mystery around what Odessa was doing, raising questions as to where she’d learned it and whether it even worked. For visual, visceral readers there’s certainly more than just atmosphere to relish — the horror in The Elementals comes at you from all five senses.
I don’t know if I enjoyed The Elementals the way horror fans enjoy their horror, but I certainly had a good time reading it.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Blood, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Addiction, Alcoholism, Cancer, Drug use, Infidelity, and Pregnancy
whatathymeitwas's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Shew lord. I don't know what kept me from reading this book for so long, when I've seen it so highly recommended. However I'm glad I read it when I did, right at the end of May. I live in the south, in the Appalachians of Tennessee, and right around the end of May is when we start getting soup air and higher temperatures, made more intolerable by that suffocating humidity. Reading a book set so brazenly in the heat and sun of summer around the end of May is perfect timing.
This book managed to be as southern Gothic as it gets. Combine some old, old families, one with a disturbing history, some creepy houses, and a few well-fleshed out main characters... and I just don't know what more I could have asked for. This is a slow burn, deeply atmospheric horror novel, written very well and ultimately worthy of the title "literary." I imagine people who picked this up out of the paperback selections of horror in the eighties were mighty surprised— many similar novels would pale in comparison.
I'm not sure what I might could say about this that others haven't already. I deign to pepper my reviews with reinstatements of the plot itself, that's what the blurb is for and many other reviewers have done so before me.
What I will say, is that once this started ramping up the creepiness factor, it didn't stop. McDowell was fantastic at smoothing things out for you and creating a hesitant sense of peacefulness, calm, and realistic thought process; immediately after he thrusts you back into the sand and you're left half buried and gasping for air. This started really creeping me out while I was reading at night. You go through many nights and days with the characters, and feel you're right alongside and interacting with them, whether it's for a bizarre family funeral, an evening birthday party, a hot noon walk by the lagoon, or peering out the windows at the full moon, the breaking Gulf, and the ever ominous Third House and all that lurks within it, seething and breathing in the languid summer heat.
That connection to the characters, the place, the general setting, and the inherently Gothic aspects of southern Alabama really transport you, and you're with them as their feet sink into dunes and slide across wooden floors caked in the ever-present pristine white sand, wondering if something might reach out and grab your ankle.
This book managed to be as southern Gothic as it gets. Combine some old, old families, one with a disturbing history, some creepy houses, and a few well-fleshed out main characters... and I just don't know what more I could have asked for. This is a slow burn, deeply atmospheric horror novel, written very well and ultimately worthy of the title "literary." I imagine people who picked this up out of the paperback selections of horror in the eighties were mighty surprised— many similar novels would pale in comparison.
I'm not sure what I might could say about this that others haven't already. I deign to pepper my reviews with reinstatements of the plot itself, that's what the blurb is for and many other reviewers have done so before me.
What I will say, is that once this started ramping up the creepiness factor, it didn't stop. McDowell was fantastic at smoothing things out for you and creating a hesitant sense of peacefulness, calm, and realistic thought process; immediately after he thrusts you back into the sand and you're left half buried and gasping for air. This started really creeping me out while I was reading at night. You go through many nights and days with the characters, and feel you're right alongside and interacting with them, whether it's for a bizarre family funeral, an evening birthday party, a hot noon walk by the lagoon, or peering out the windows at the full moon, the breaking Gulf, and the ever ominous Third House and all that lurks within it, seething and breathing in the languid summer heat.
That connection to the characters, the place, the general setting, and the inherently Gothic aspects of southern Alabama really transport you, and you're with them as their feet sink into dunes and slide across wooden floors caked in the ever-present pristine white sand, wondering if something might reach out and grab your ankle.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body horror, Cursing, Death, Drug abuse, Drug use, Grief, Death of parent, and Alcohol
Minor: Animal death, Cancer, Child death, Chronic illness, Infidelity, Miscarriage, Racism, Terminal illness, Toxic relationship, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
crosberg's review against another edition
dark
mysterious
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body horror, Death, Gore, Toxic relationship, Blood, Death of parent, Murder, Alcohol, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Cursing, Death, Violence, Excrement, and Grief
herelieshenry's review against another edition
dark
emotional
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death, Death, Racism, Death of parent, Fire/Fire injury, and Injury/Injury detail
Moderate: Grief
Very much seems to be a case of a white author incorporating ignorant racial tropes while attempting to critique racism & classism in the story; usage of anti-Black tropes specifically (particularly regarding Black women).