A review by kitpower
809 Jacob Street by Marty Young
5.0
Full disclosure: This novel is published by Black Beacon Books, who are publishing my début in January 2014. That said, I want to be very clear: I bought and paid for this novella myself, and I am writing this review 100% unsolicited. If I didn't have anything nice to say, I would say nothing.
I have a lot of nice things to say.
I finished 809 Jacob Street two days ago, and so far, I've been unable to read anything else. I begin to read, and my mind just starts drifting back to this novella. It's... OK, yeah, it's haunting me.
Marty Young is a writer of rare talent. He manages to interweave the mundane and supernatural so skilfully you never see or feel the joins. He draws you outside the lines, behind the curtain, out of the blue and into the black, and does it with such grace and skill that it's only in retrospect that you realise how dark your surroundings have become, how unfamiliar the landmarks are.
How far away you are from home.
That same alienation, the same feeling of slipping through the cracks, haunts the two main protagonists of this tale. Mr. Young carries us along the twin tracks of the narrative effortlessly, building the sense of wrongness and dislocation brick by careful brick. He also introduces us to the best realised group of child characters I've encountered in a horror tale since Stephen King's IT.
To say any more would be to deny you the pleasure of discovery. I have no intention of doing this. But I urge you to treat yourself to a trip down Jacob Street.
You will come back changed.
I have a lot of nice things to say.
I finished 809 Jacob Street two days ago, and so far, I've been unable to read anything else. I begin to read, and my mind just starts drifting back to this novella. It's... OK, yeah, it's haunting me.
Marty Young is a writer of rare talent. He manages to interweave the mundane and supernatural so skilfully you never see or feel the joins. He draws you outside the lines, behind the curtain, out of the blue and into the black, and does it with such grace and skill that it's only in retrospect that you realise how dark your surroundings have become, how unfamiliar the landmarks are.
How far away you are from home.
That same alienation, the same feeling of slipping through the cracks, haunts the two main protagonists of this tale. Mr. Young carries us along the twin tracks of the narrative effortlessly, building the sense of wrongness and dislocation brick by careful brick. He also introduces us to the best realised group of child characters I've encountered in a horror tale since Stephen King's IT.
To say any more would be to deny you the pleasure of discovery. I have no intention of doing this. But I urge you to treat yourself to a trip down Jacob Street.
You will come back changed.