Blog # 1
I move to Norway in a month. Between the hassle of gathering up my apartment and shutting out the nervous jitters, I have managed to still get some work done on my second novel, a few short stories, and a little reading too. As I mentioned in Blog #0, this will be a space where I’ll ramble. Nothing professional here. I’m no book critic, this is new to me, so when I do talk about books here, it will only be books that I have enjoyed. I also can’t see these Blogs being particularly long; I will tell you why I liked a certain book and why you might like it too. If you are looking for something in-depth, this isn’t where you will find it.
Black Mouth is a first for me from Ronald Malfi. I was introduced to him through Philip Fracassi’s podcast The Dark Word, in which Malfi appears on episode #10. What roped me in for this particular novel, was that Black Mouth has been described as a coming-of-age horror akin to Stephen King’s IT or Ghost Story by Peter Straub; and I have to agree. The book seamlessly moves between 1998 and the present day, chronicling four children’s - Jamie, Mia, Clay, and Dennis - relationship with a strange man named The Magician, whom they meet on the outskirts of an abandoned mine named Black Mouth. The narrative circles around a tragic event that the four children experience in the summer of their youth, which unknowingly binds them to each other, their hometown, and to The Magician as well. When that bond and the memories of the summer of 1998 resurface years later, the four children are called home, called back to Black Mouth, where something has been waiting for them ever since.
Malfi writes with a sense of time and place that brings you into the lives of the four children effortlessly. It doesnt take long to be emerssed in what it means to experience something so strange and profound at such the delicate age in which the characters formed their bond - their circle. I loved how Malfi wrote The Magician. He is shrouded in mystery, a character seemingly bountiful with knowledge but also unwilling to share said knowledge without some kind of agreement or pact. Elements of McCarthy’s Judge shone through in sequences in which The Magician alluded to his shadowed back story, and a dark deal he made for his powers. This was an element of the novel, amongst many, that I really enjoyed. I also have to mention that the relationship between Jamie and Dennis was beautiful and heartbreaking all the same, and by the end of the novel you will most likely have a lump in your throat.
If you dig the aforementioned: Stephen King’s IT and Ghost Story by Peter Straub, you will enjoy Black Mouth. I would even say, without giving too much away, that fans of cosmic horror will find something quite terrifying in Black Mouth too.
I will be reading more Malfi soon, and when I do I’m sure I’ll post my thoughts here.
Until the next one, cheers!