Customer Reviews

Age of Consent

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

You know the story. A nice family from the city decided to buy that long abandoned house in the country. They move in and Strange Things start to happen. Okay, so Age of Consent isn't bursting with originality. Still, horror stories are like the blues. It isn't always about what new stuff you bring to it, but rather how well you can play in the framework.

So how well does first time novelist Howard Mittelmark play?

Age of Consent starts off with a creepy little prologue introducing the haunted Oneida House in upstate New York. A contractor and his crew are in the process of restoring the place for the new owner. Strange things happen and nobody is willing to work on the house after dark. It's a great bit that establishes atmosphere very well without going over the top.

From there we are introduced to the Coulter family. Phil and his kids Peter and Virginia are dragging in the last of their belongings. Julia (Phil's wife) has to stay behind in the city to finish up some work. This family is where Mr. Mittelmark shines. The characters in this book are terrifically written, three dimensional people that you will care about. Peter, Ginny, their family dynamic and their friends are all very well drawn. Their lives in the new town are realistic. The Coulters and the secondary characters in this book are not the typical two-dimensional characters put in place to move along the plot.

So what about the plot? It is interesting. The teens undergo drastic changes after moving. Mr. Mittelmark cleverly doesn't say how much is the influence of the ghosts and how much is just normal teenage life. I also appreciated that the author didn't waste my time with the 'are there ghosts, or is it all in their imagination?' ploy. That is rarely ever done well in my opinion. There is a strong sexual undercurrent to the book which was fitting considering the main characters are all teenagers.

Things jump back and forth from 'now' to 1971, showing what became of the people living in Oneida House (their story is teased out bit by bit over the course of the book). There are even some interesting bits about the history of the Gnostics, the Mormons and the Oneida community.

The pacing of the book is possibly the weak point. For a while the plot just sort of wanders aimlessly, lacking suspense. In the end a direction is given, but then just sort of fizzles out. The ending is good, in that you don't feel short changed, but I was looking for maybe a stronger finish. Still, this is a short novel, so the pacing isn't a major issue. I think these issues are mainly due to it being a first novel.

Age of Consent is well worth a read for those who enjoy a good character driven scary story.

Over all, Howard Mittelmark is an excellent new writer. Once he hits his stride in future books, he could rank with my favorites in this field.

This is a great read - compelling, twisted, creepy with a large dose of humor and surprising philosophical and historical insight. It moves along at a fast clip, and is actually beautifully written with sentences which just leap off the page and crisp vivid descriptions. Many lines are laugh out loud funny. The teenage characters who suddenly find themselves in a confusing, dangerous world are perfectly drawn. The drug filled flashbacks to the sixties radicals and the interweaving story of the utopian cults of the 1800's will intrigue anyone interested in history or philosophy of religion. Although it is superficially a haunted house story, much of the plot is so daringly original and bizarre that it moves well beyond the tried and true notes of the genre. While there are a few steamy, gorgeously rendered sex scenes, most notably a very sensual and emotionally laden lesbian encounter between two acid tripping college girls, much of the rest of the sex is rather sinister and dark. While this might offend a meek reader, it's not gratuitous, but rather serves to illustrate the sometimes nightmarish perils of adolescence with a lot of heart and compassion.

I've read all the modern-day "masters" of horror, and I have to say, newcomer Howard Mittelmark puts them all to shame. Age of Consent is the scariest book I've read in about twenty years--and it moves at light speed, yet still manages to be loaded with solid writing, chilling imagery, and real characters.

Mittelmark is wonderful at subtle foreshadowing. His motifs are unsettling, the use of mirrors and windows in particular a double reference to the way we see ourselves and what we believe happens to us after we die. You'll be going to bed with the shades drawn or the curtains pulled tightly closed. His imagery--not too much, not too little--is sharp and photographic.

Poe's concept of perversity has been at the root of every horror tale, and many writers today are too obvious with it. Mittelmark is the first modern writer I've read that's been able to take that concept and integrate it so well that the fourth wall is dismantled, brick by brick. Expertly, Mittelmark has shed the genre's traditional way-out characters and their extreme dysfunctions, addictions, and habits with whom the reader can't connect. The people in Age of Consent are just the people we know every day: workaholics, normal teens (who all come from relatively "normal" homes) experimenting with drugs for the first time, idealistic young adults who have natural desires to change the world, people who have sexual attractions they shouldn't.

This is going to be a very tough act to follow. If you're smart, and you want to be up for a few nights scared out of your mind, BUY THIS BOOK. I promise you won't be sorry, but I think other horror novels are going to fall flat for awhile.

I completely agree with the points made in "smarter than your average...". This is a page-turner, intriguing from the start and gratifying in all respects, with an equally satisfying conclusion. I was especially taken with the author's use of the regional setting and its history. More, please!

The book starts off slow and goes down hill from there, besides the slow pace in the story line, the author doesnt seem to seperate flashbacks from the present by using little dashes or dots to denote 'ok the story is going to jump back to the 1970's for a paragraph or two before returning to the present' which gives the reader a disjointed feeling when suddenly the story decides to do a random time shift to the past before returning to the present.

I'm sorry to have fallen for the hype about this book and actually ordered it thru amazon. I wish I had bought this at the used book store instead.

The book is slow and I'm still waiting for something exciting to happen! But I'm ready to give up on this book and I only read up to page 166 and so far.....nothing exciting happening to keep my interest.

I hope that future books written by Mr Mittelmark will pick up the pace a bit and give the readers clues on when he is going to do a time shift to the past to explain whatever needs to be explained.

I noticed that at the time of this review being written that Amazon.com is temporayly out of stock on this book. I just hope they dont restock it since they will end up spending a lot of money for something that wont sell!

Forget what the other reviews say and decide for yourself whether you like this book or not.
I personally thought it was great and I read several books a week.
I loved the moving back and forth between the two eras. The only thing that bothered me about this story was that there was no reason for the kids to move with the father, that thought kept coming back and bothering me during the entire story. But otherwise the story was strong and engaging. I did not guess what was going to happen before it happened, which is a huge plus.

Nothing special about this story. Read it or don't. You won't dislike it but will remember little a couple weeks after you've set it down.

Honestly, are the previous reviews done by friends of the author to try and sell this book? I have never read such a pile of garbage in my life. The story was uninteresting, the characters were shallow and hard to relate to or sympathize with, and the book was just poorly written. While reading it, I felt like they were throwing in all these social taboos to try and sell the book. You have a bunch of teenagers who do nothing but hang out and do every drug under the book(and these are supposed to be the main characters you're supposed to sympathize with), a father who tries to kill his children, orgy's, self-mutilation and sex between adults and teenagers. But the strange thing is, none of these taboos are done in a way that's shocking or interesting enough to be good for shock value alone.

Plus, the story itself is just ridiculous. All these people blindly follow this mysterious guy without a second thought and perform acts of self-mutilation and sexual deprication just because he tells them to. What?!?!?! Plus, there was a strange aspect of time-travel that just did not fit with the rest of the story. And the conclusion was just beyond belief. I guess nobody will notice that somebody was killed and everybody will just ignore it.

As for the story being scary, well, try again. I read this book in the middle of the night and struggled to stay awake. I will give it the first chapter. I read the first chapter and thought it might be good and spine tingling, but then the book fell apart after the first chapter and became laughable at best and not remotely frightening.

Do me a favor and read something else and don't waste your time.