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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The first novel of Michael McDowell; unsung American author.,
By
This review is from: The Amulet (Paperback)
"The Amulet", first published in 1979, was Michael McDowell's first paperback original. It set the pace for what was to be a marvelous career, including several other novels, such as "Cold Moon Over Babylon", "The Elementals", "Katie", "Gilded Needles" and the successful serial novel "Blackwater", to which Stephen King gives credit as his main inspiration for the "Green Mile" series.Also, as a footnote, Michael McDowell was the creator of the screenplay and characters of the hugely successful "Beetlejuice" movie. Set in the summer of 1965, at the dawn of the Vietnam war, this is the haunting story of a sleepy southern town called Pine Cone, and what went on there... After her husband is the casualty of a bizarre accident, young Sarah Howell slowly comes to realize that her strange, treacherous mother-in-law, is somehow behind an infernal plan of revenge. Slowly, as a pendant in a gold chain passes from hand to hand, citizens of the town begin to die in horrid, violent ways. What is behind this? What leads a loving mother to set her children and home on fire? A dutiful policeman to turn against his wife? A friend against the other?... as the body count rises, Sarah must run against time to stop the accursed amulet... but slowly it seems to be finding her way to her. Michael McDowell passed away on December 27, 1999. He was a lecturer at Tufts college, a Harvard Graduate and a Brandeis Ph.D... He will be sorely missed on account of his books, wickedly funny, consistently written and beautifully plotted. His characters stay with the reader even long after finishing the book. It's too bad he has been overlooked by many a horror and literature fan, for this si the real stuff... Horror as Modern Literature.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Book I could not Forget,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Amulet (Paperback)
I have looked for this book for years. I read the book the Amulet when I was 13 years old so the memory of it is in bits and pieces but it has stuck with me forever. I am eager to read it again and as soon as I receive it I gaurentee I will read it over and over again. My daughter loves Stephen King but I told her when she reads this it will really make her think. Please reasure people that it is a book that will stay with you for a long time, and once you begin to read it, you won't be able to put it down. It is full of suspense.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Very readable,
By Ron "mvg@whidbey.com" (Whidbey Island, WA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Amulet (Paperback)
PLOT: After her soldier husband Dean is disfigured in a terrible rifle range accident, Sarah Howell finds her dreary life made even worse -- she works in a dull assembly line job all day, and endures long evenings at home with her vegetable-like husband and his vindictive mother. Her mother-in-law blames the entire town for her son's accident, and her gift of an unusual piece of jewelry to the wife of a man she particularly feels responsible for Dean's troubles starts a chain of gruesome and senseless deaths in the small Alabama town. Slowly Sarah begins to see a connection between all the unusual deaths and the amulet and enlists the aid of her neighbor Becca to track down and destroy it.
REVIEW: The first McDowell book I read was Cold Moon Over Babylon, and I enjoyed it a lot. It took a lot to find a copy, too. None of his books seems to have been reprinted and most are expensive or hoarded. I was surprised when I got a hold of The Amulet through paperbackswap.com, and enjoyed it as well. The deaths do get a bit too bizarre, but his writing is so fluid and interesting that it's a minor point. What I really liked is that the story was linear -- where one chapter ended the next began -- no side trips to other characters or parallel plot lines. And the heroine acted pretty sensibly -- she told people her suspicions and got some help, rather than keep it all to herself like to many annoying fictional characters in dangerous situations. McDowell's body of work (no pun) is woefully sparse, but I think The Elementals is his best work. He also wrote unter the name Nathan Aldyne, putting out a series of mystery books with a gay bartender and a straight real estate agent as his detectives.
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