California Gothic [Mass Market Paperback]

Dennis Etchison (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 1995

Dan, a poet and former cult member, is shocked by the sudden arrival of Jude, his long-since-dead high-school sweetheart, and learns of her intention to claim Dan and his family's souls.

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback
• Publisher: Dell (May 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440217261
• ISBN-13: 978-0440217268
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,902,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars It's Frankenbook!, May 26, 2000

By 

Chadwick H. Saxelid "Bookworm" (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: California Gothic (Hardcover)

Is the main character haunted by the ghost of a former love, will the reader even care? This "novel" is nothing more than a few short stories stapled together to make a book length read. And the print and chapter gaps are pretty large too. Etchison is a great writer and this book is not without merit, but it feels like something that was tossed off, and the ending will make you feel cheated.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars 5 hours of my life that I'm not getting back, January 3, 2002

By 

ardennes17 (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: California Gothic (Mass Market Paperback)

I've recently started another book by edited Etchison and the name was hauntingly familiar-- all I could remember was that he wrote a lame book that was my misfortune to read many years ago. And this was it. Move on, move on, move on.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Like most Etchison stuff . . ., February 24, 2003

By 

Greg (Tulsa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: California Gothic (Hardcover)

Well, not a very successful book. But really, in order to decide that, you'd have to know what the author's intent was, right? Here it just isn't clear. Now, that's not always a bad thing, but here, as is so in most "horror" tales, it is a bad thing. Everything about the story seemed rather arbitrary. It could've begun anywhere, could've gone anywhere, could've ended up anywhere. It just didn't matter. There was some good atmospheric stuff, but more often than not it was unnecessary, thrown in just to show how well the author could put you in the setting of the story. To make this review short, keep you horizons narrow and this will be a mind-blowing novel. Read more than three or four books in your life and this thing will either bore you or fall apart before your eyes. Hey, and here's something funny: I read this thing three times. Why? I think it was something in the drinking water here. I had forgotten reading it. Maybe it's just not good enough to remember but not bad enough to outrage the reader enough to always remember it and resent the author. In other words, it's like a lot of the horror being pedalled out there. Happy dumpster-diving.