A review by erincharp
Universal Harvester by John Darnielle

2.0

Ugh. Usually I love puzzlebox stories, but I mostly hated this one. At first glance, I thought it was a horror story and it hooked me in. Jeremy Heldt, a videostore clerk in small town Iowa, begins getting reports from customers about strange scenes spliced into movies. Scenes that are at the least confusing, but at the most, concerning. The scenes are short and of people in hoods, people in chairs, people running with an old farmhouse looming in the background. This hooked me in and I zoomed through the beginning of the book--then it all fell apart for me and I'm not really sure what to take from it. Life in small town Midwest is oppressive? I can agree with that, but I still keep thinking about this one and I'm not really sure what the point was. At any rate, it was lost on me.