Customer Reviews

The Ceremonies

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

T.E.D. Klein entered the world of horror fiction with a great big splash when The Ceremonies was published in 1984. The novel was met with much critical success, being nominated for a 1985 World Fantasy Award and winning the British Fantasy Society award for best novel. Stephen King proclaimed it the most exciting horror novel since Peter Straub's Ghost Story. The Ceremonies really is a magnificent work of horror, but it is not for everyone. If you like action on top of action, you may find yourself bogged down and discouraged by this novel. At over 500 pages, it is rather long, and it can seem even longer than it really is to readers seeking quick thrills. Klein builds this novel quite slowly and tediously, creating an atmosphere of impending doom that grows in short increments from one page to the next. It is not the awful events that make this horror novel work; it is the atmosphere of dread and suspense. One cannot help but detect a little bit of Lovecraft in Klein (and not just because one of the characters is called the Old One), although both men's style differs considerably. The power that stands to be unleashed by the completion of "the ceremonies" described here is gargantuan, an awesome, world-destroying creature called up from the depths of the earth, a creature too ancient to even be labeled evil.

There are several storylines running through this novel, and their paths converge on only a few occasions, which is a facet of the writing that may bother some readers. Jeremy Freirs is a graduate student and teacher who decides to spend his summer working on his dissertation and preparing for the class he will be teaching in the fall on Gothic Literature; he thinks he has found the perfect place in Gilead, New Jersey, is a world all to its own, the home of a strict religious sect with extremely puritan ideas. Moving into a former storage building on the farm of Sarr and Deborah Poroth, he expects to spend a productive summer free from essentially all distractions - he is quite wrong in this assumption. Meanwhile, in New York, the rather reserved Carol Conklin goes about trying to survive in the big city on a small income from her job at a library. She meets Jeremy in New York just before he leaves for the summer, and a connection is made which will find the couple developing a romantic relationship on somewhat strange terms. What Jeremy and Carol do not know is that this relationship is the work of a strange, little old man known as Mr. Rosebottom. Rosie is actually the Old One working to bring his master back after a very long absence, and Jeremy and Carol are the unsuspecting keys to his success.

It can take some time to really get into this novel. A lot of time is spent introducing the characters, describing their true standing in the events to come, and introducing us to the Poroths, their farm, their community, and their ascetic religion. In time, the story comes alive in much the same way that untold numbers of snakes and worms come to infest the countryside of Gilead. Some might say that nothing much happens until late in the novel, but plenty is going on in terms of building the proper atmosphere in which this novel lives and breathes. The religious tie-ins to the events at the Poroth farm work beautifully in this context. As much as I love this novel, though, I have to say it is not perfect. Despite the rich and closely cultivated storyline, the relationship between Jeremy and the virginal Carol is rather mechanical, never developing the least bit of spark; Jeremy is in fact much more attracted to Deborah Poroth than he is to Carol. I did find the Old One to be a really effective character, one strong yet mysterious enough to hold this novel together as it see-saws back and forth between Jeremy in Gilead and Carol in New York, but there is seemingly a weakness in terms of character development here that prevents me from giving this novel five stars. Despite this fact, The Ceremonies is a truly landmark effort deserving to be read and admired by all who pursue the darker paths and are willing and eager to let the plot develop at its own pace without becoming frustrated over the lack of action early on.

This book, as with its companion piece, Dark Gods, should have a permanent place on every horror/dark fantasy fan's book shelf. The disquieting atmosphere evoked by this book provides an inimitable reading experience that is unlike anything being written today by modern dark fantasy writers, the majority of whom seem always compelled to assault their readers with cheap, formulaic narrative. To appreciate this book you must have a natural affinity for the rich gothic literature of the 19th century and a sensitivity to dark, slow-moving drama. You cannot be a passive reader. This book is not a 'stalk-and-slash' thriller; its aesthetic merit is not found in its ability to thrill, but in its ability to inspire awe and a profound sense of disturbing unease. Read it as such and you will not be disappointed.

Other writers capable of producing brilliantly dark and disturbing prose include: Fritz Leiber, Thomas Ligotti, Thomas Tessier, and Steve Rasnic Tem.

The Ceremonies is a transformation of T.E.D. Klein's earlier novelette "The Events at Poroth Farm." It is not necessary to read the latter in order to appreciate the former, for they are quite different. It may be useful to prime yourself with Klein's story collection "Dark Gods" in order to get a better idea of his style.

Sarr and Deborah Poroth are farmers living within an ulra-religious community. They eschew modernity in all its comforts, for such things are not of god. They love each other almost as much as they love god, even though none of that belief in god is ultimately useful to them, as the indifferent universe wins over all (interesting touch of reality, there). The virginal city dweller, Carol, also a true believer, longs for a relationship. Mostly she finds comfort in the attentions of Mr. Rosebottom (Rosie), an old man who presents himself as some kind of kindly grandfather type, but who is actually more evil than anyone can imagine. Jeremy is a teacher on sabbatical at the Poroth farm, studying Machen, Lovecraft, LeFanu, Jackson, Stoker, and other writers of the gothic and weird. He becomes involved with Carol and the other characters through the machinations of Rosie.

The most interesting thing about the book is how Klein makes the characters subsidiary to the evil, which in turn makes the atmosphere of the story even weirder. You won't find this kind of thing in stories by Stephen King, or other writers whose works are much more character-centered (and less interesting, I think). Klein's character Jeremy studies the works of the great weird writers, but this is not enough to make Jeremy himself even mildly interesting. Rather, it is the quoted parts of Machen's "The White People" from Jeremy's reading that holds your attention. It's not Jeremy's longings for the beautiful Deborah or the innocent Carol. Rather, it's the outbuilding on the Poroth farm in which Jeremy stays. It's the weird noises in the night, the onslaught of bugs at the screens of the outbuilding, the mold, Bwada the cat...all things that act against the characters.

Be prepared to work on The Ceremonies for a few hours. Klein doesn't go from zero to sixty: he goes from zero to five to ten to twenty...then gets to sixty in the last few chapters. That's because in between zero and sixty he is carefully building the atmosphere of the story, doling it out by the spoonful in a truly weird beginning, then adding a bit more chapter by chapter. It is a most effective technique for hooking the reader.

The Ceremonies is a truly weird masterpiece, to be favorably compared with the works of Lovecraft, Poe, Blackwood, Machen, Campbell and others whose work has made them giants in the field. I hope to see much more from this enormously talented author.

I like Klein's work, and in the past have found his writing style and character development to be quite engaging ("Children of the Kingdom" for example). So I was excited to find this book, especially since it was based upon his superior short story "The Events at Poroth Farm".

Unhappily, in writing this novel, Klein took "the Events..." and stretched out the material to novel length, without anything much new or interesting to say. Page after page after page of nothing- it is wrong to suggest that he used this time to build suspense. It was all just filler material.

Still, I couldn't help but to read on, hoping that one of the protagonists, Jeremy Freirs, would meet some gruesome end. There was nothing to like about this lead character, who was self-absorbed, dull, sloppy, and physically unappealing. Somebody kill him soon, please, I thought over and over again.

None of which explains why Carol, another lead character, was so eager to surrender her virginity to him, especially later in the novel when she visits him at the farm for a second time, determined to share his bed with a character recently described as paunchy, flabby, pasty, moon-faced, unkempt, sweaty, and dirty.

Other characters seemed to be developing toward something, but then they just kind of lost any significance. Just more filler material.

The last few pages seemed rushed, and anticlimactic as well. How does a near-sighted, overweight, breathless-from-climbing-the stairs man run through two miles of forest at night is the only question worth pondering by the end.

Oh well, the book only cost me a penny, plus two-fifty s/h, so it was no great loss.

Read the original short story- in every way but length it is vastly superior to the "Ceremonies".

An ancient evil is waiting to be awakened. It's earthbound agent has been planning for this for decades and now the time has come to prepare to perform the rituals necessary to bring about its return to Earth. All that's left is to set the pieces in motion. Klein has masterfully weaved a plot together that brings us to the brink of the end of the world as we know it. Long at times, The Ceremonies is a deliberately paced novel with strategically placed chills that left the hairs standing on the back of my neck.

Klein's Dark Gods is one of my absolute favorite books, so I was looking forward to reading The Ceremonies. I put the book off for quite some time, as I was waiting for a time when I could really savor his writing. I suppose when something is built up like that, it is an odds on favorite to be a little disappointing. While it didn't quite live up to Dark Gods, I was satisfied with The Ceremonies.

Reviewing this book and giving it only three stars is a bit tough for me. Mainly because I actually liked the way the author (Mr. Klein) writes. His prose is flowing, frightening, and fun all at the same time. The characters are vivid (even secondary characters like roommates) and get lodged in your psyche long after you've put the book down, too.

But let's talk about the story for a moment.

The plot circles around a creature that has long lay dormant in the Earth. Every so often - at special times of a special year - it can grow in strength. During one of these `strengthenings' it captures a young boy and plants within him the evils that it harbors for mankind. This boy, now grown to a very old but powerful man named Rosie, has received a message from his underworld master that the world is about to change; and the creature is about to come out of the Earth and reek havoc on humanity (because of the disrespect humans have shown toward the environment).

Enter Jeremy Freirs, a nobody-of-a-professor, who happens to fall for Carol, a beautiful virginal woman who tried to be a catholic nun (but failed) and is now a librarian in New York City. Little does Jeremy know that Carol's untouched virtue will play a pivotal role in The Ceremonies that are being set up by Rosie, the master's above ground puppet.

Jeremy decides to leave New York City for the summer and spend some time in the country. He moves in with a couple (Sarr and Deborah Poroth) who are VERY religiously inclined and live in an Amish-like settlement with similarly minded folks. Jeremy thinks he'll be able to get some reading and research done for next year's classes, but little does he know that the cycles of The Ceremonies are in the Poroth's backyard. A horrifying and engrossing set of circumstances are set forth and the world begins to change, bit by bit. The creature is coming, and no one can stop it.

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Even with these wonderful qualities, the book d-r-a-g-g-e-d for me. At over 500 pages, I felt that the author stretched the story too thin. I realize that Mr. Klein needed to get The Ceremonies set down so that the reader could visualize and understand them, but it took soooo long to do that; I had to force myself to keep reading the mid-sections of the novel. Also, Rosie, this incredibly powerful old man who can snap enemies in half and stuff them into hide-a-bed sofas, gets killed by wasps. By wasps! That didn't sit well with me. I also didn't like the fact that he developed several characters so well, making the reader form a nice reading relationship with them, and then snuffed them out (perhaps the author was trying to balance life and death in the book, but it didn't work for me).

Even so, I'm sure there are some readers out there who would absolutely love this book. I believe it is Mr. Klein's only novel, and thus probably makes it coveted by certain horror afficionados.

A paperback version of this book was givin to me around 1991 while in Germany in the mlitary. I just picked it up about 2 weeks ago (about 15 years later)and read it while communting to work. This book really impressed me. The story flowed well and the best part of this book was the Old One who was with us continually thru the novel. An interesting thing about this book was its attitude toward minorities; any time a minority whether it be "blacks or Puerta Rican and other" was treated with contempt or indifference by the main characters in the book. Being a so called minority myself I found myself hoping the Old One would accomplished his mission. None of the main characters were likeable except for Deborah Porath who was a really nice and thoughtful character. Jeremy was a fat, lazy slob, who coveted his host's wife. The host Sarr was a self righteous hypocryte who coveted his guest's love interest (who happened to be a skinny, plain woman who lived in filth and borrowed her roomates shoes {now that is nasty}). However all of this made this book work. Like someone else stated the ending leaves many loose ends to be tied up. Some great, unlikeable characters and a good read. I don't agree that this was a slow book; it was a page turner.

Klein's one-and-only novel is not just a great horror novel -- it's a great novel in any genre. What he pulls off here is extraordinarily rare, creating a text that manages to work what can be seen as metafictional commentary on, in this case, the entire history of horror fiction into a structurally elegant and compelling horror novel populated with flawed but sympathetic characters.

Stripped to its basics, The Ceremonies tells the story of a 30ish New York City grad student in English literature whose thesis is on Gothic and horror literature, and whose life suddenly starts to resemble some of the works he's reading over the course of a summer.

Klein comes up with one of the most innovative reworkings of the "forbidden book" trope in horror fiction that I can think of. Normally, the forbidden book (say, H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon) is a text invented for a work of fiction which, within the world of that fiction, reveals in whole or in part the secret workings of the universe. Generally, a forbidden text is rare, dangerous even to read, and filled with knowledge that undermines all cultural norms when it comes to religion. For example, the Necronomicon reveals that all human religion is a comforting lie that obscures the true, horrifying and precarious state of humanity in a universe that is consciously hostile towards us.

But as the malign Old One muses in the novel, forbidden knowledge never stays hidden. As a character in another Klein story notes, if the Necronomicon really existed, it would be available in paperback in any book store. What Klein posits here is that the real forbidden knowledge of the world (which includes the malevolent and world-threatening ceremonies of the title) is, like Poe's purloined letter, hidden in plain sight: an off-kilter tarot deck here, a strange Eastern European folk dance there, and, most significantly, the real Victorian-era horror writer Arthur Machen's sinister tale "The White People" right in the middle of it all. And what the Old One -- a deceptively jolly looking old man turned into a psychopathic apostle of an invader from Outside back when he was a boy in the 1870's -- can do is reassemble the ceremonies from a variety of sources and, when the stars are right, usher in what will be a really, really, really, really bad New World Order, at least for human beings and, in fact, every living thing on the planet.

There are a lot of delights both light and dark in the novel -- Klein's always fascinating evocation of New York; the grad student's often hilariously apt musings on the strengths and deficiencies of various classic Gothic and horror texts (he finds Henry James a big fat bore and "The Turn of the Screw" the most over-rated ghost story in history, an observation I wholeheartedly agree with); the odd rural reality of the Brethren, a vaguely Amish religious group whose settlement in New Jersey is the backdrop for much of the novel; and the horrifying inner life of the Old One, possibly the least romanticized hyper-intelligent serial killer in the history of horror fiction. The novel fairly hums along, dense enough to reward second and third readings but compelling enough to work almost entirely on the level of ever-tightening suspense.

Terrible things happen to good characters here, all of it justified by the text, and while the storyline is dead serious, Klein manages to slip in enough parodies and inversions of classic tropes to keep one intellectually occupied (the novel's gender-inversion of the traditional Lovecraftian Vagina Dentata Invader from Outside is a real pip; so, too, is what happens to the one good character who knows exactly what's going on and has been charged by Something with the task of halting the ceremonies).

In any case, out-of-print and highest recommendation. Existential terror at its most entertaining.

For horror fans blessed with a bit of patience, Klein's artfully executed and lengthy novel makes for a rewarding read. I particularly appreciated the way he wove together strands of esoteric lore and multiple literary allusions. The book features a unique and ingenious premise, in which an ancient evil housed in an innocuous old man tricks and cajoles unsuspecting people into performing the necessary rituals for releasing a catastrophic horror.

Although Klein draws his characters well, and takes his time doing it, I unfortunately found them less than compelling. The one exception, Sarr Poroth's mother, simply wasn't around enough. And she certainly didn't play the crucial role at the end which I had hoped she would. The portrait of the Amish-like "Brethren" also stretched believability a bit thin at times. Sorry to say, the ending too fell rather flat.

That said, for me this book stands well above most efforts in the genre. It attains the rare modern status of true horror "literature."

I've owned a copy of this book for years now, and upon recently finishing the four stories of Klein's other book Dark Gods, I was frothing at the mouth to delve into one of (in fact, his only) longer works. Ultimately, I liked it, but there were just a few too many little things which could (or should) have been different.

Without giving anything away, I'll just say that I found way too much focus on the antagonist(s) and their side of things, to the point that we, the readers, know more about what's REALLY going on than the protagonists. And it stays like this through the end of the book - although there is certainly a climax, the epilogue is a single page which serves more as a vague coda rather than a resolution.

There were also more than a few scenes which really didn't serve much purpose, in the end - these were mostly long stretches of dialougue between the (VERY) religious townspeople of the novel's main setting, Gilead, New Jersey. While I did understand that it was key to show how religious the people were, I felt it was a bit of a stretch to show them contemplating every little thing that went on in their town (and long before the horrors began). It made for a few stretches of boredom in the suspense.

However, you DO remember that I gave this book four out of five stars, right? That's because this book was so GOOD, it fairly throttles the not-so-good parts. There is a very classy build-up of suspense, going from very vague, very slow to much more blatant and fast-paced in the last third or so. The characters were well-illustrated, for the most part (I would have wished to have seen more of Carol towards the end of the book), and the descriptions were colorful and yet not overabundant. There were also many a reference to various classics of gothic/horror literature throughout

(Lovecraft, Dunsany, Walpole, and above all, Arthur Machen's "The White People," for key reasons), which was also a delight.

All in all, this is a slightly flawed but overall impressive novel from a very reclusive author who I really wish would write more often - Klein tells a good story, and THE CEREMONIES is no exception to this.