Midnight Picnic [Paperback]

Nick Antosca (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2009

In the morning, Bram finds the bones of a murdered child. At noon, the murdered child begs for his help. And by nightfall, they have killed a man together and set off into the afterlife, where nothing is what it was, and death is only the beginning of punishment. An eerie story about the nature of death and the self, Midnight Picnic inhabits an American landscape made strange and unfamiliar. From the author of the cult novel Fires, Midnight Picnic is a haunting and disturbing experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In Antosca's second novel, a campy page-turner set in contemporary backwater West Virginia, 22-year old Bram becomes obsessed with a murder after a child's bones are discovered in the woods behind his home. The ghost of the dead boy, six-year-old Adam Dovey, soon appears to Bram and urges him to help get revenge against Jacob Bunny, the introverted, kind-hearted, ex-con alcoholic who 23 years ago drowned Adam. Bram's initial reluctance gives way, and before long, Bram torches Jacob's cottage, killing him. Just about then the narrative begins to fall apart, as Bram and Adam wander through a netherworld exurbia in pursuit of dead Jacob's soul. The further they go, the campier the novel becomes, accented by half-baked riffs on the soul and journeys into strip clubs and back alleys that read like an ersatz hybrid of David Lynch and Brian Evenson. It's a demented little novel that'll appeal to readers into weirdness for weirdness's sake. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Antosca’s first novel, Fires (2006), was praised for its darkly inventive exploration of small-town scandal. His latest work plumbs deep into horror territory in an unsettling story about a murdered child and its restless ghost. Living above a bar is the only excitement punctuating the mundane existence of Bram, a gas station attendant living near a West Virginia forest, until he stumbles across the bones of a small boy. Within hours of Bram bringing the bones back to his apartment, the deceased Adam’s ghost materializes and persuades Bram to help punish his killer, forest-bound hermit Jacob Bunny. But the fire that dispatches Bunny in his cabin satisfies Adam only superficially. For Adam, the real punishment awaiting Bunny will happen in the same afterlife domain both inhabit—a shadowy, midnight world of lost highways and perpetually lit mini-marts that Adam ushers Bram into for an unholy purpose. Antosca’s searing and disturbing minimalist prose creates a vividly original portrait of haunted souls, and marks him as one of horror’s rising stars. --Carl Hays --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 188 pages
• Publisher: Word Riot Press (February 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0977934330
• ISBN-13: 978-0977934331
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,633,827 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best book I have read so far this year., March 8, 2009

By 

Michael Smith (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Midnight Picnic (Paperback)

I recently discovered nick antosca when a website compared his first book Fires to early bret easton ellis novels (and b.e.e. is my favorite author) so I thought I would check it out. Especially since bret takes so damn long to write a new book. Anyway, Fires was one of those books that I could not put down that made me simultaneously wish what I was reading was turned into a really good indie movie and also just be so excited that what was written was so gripping and entertaining that I was even more content by the fact it was taking place in a book.

Needless to say, nick has far out done himself with midnight picnic. I am not even going to try to give a summary of the plot, because I feel like that would not do the book justice. I recommend it to people who like things dark and creepy with a very unsettling yet strangely comfortable mood. This is very different from Fires, but in my opinion it's even better. Nick is definitely a writer that I plan to follow from now on and I really hope he has a very fruitful and successful career.

Movies, music, and tv shows are great but for your dollar, books are still the best form of escapism. Especially for how things are nowadays. Please do yourself a favor and check out this book so you can enjoy something that's different and unique and utterly fascinating.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bloody Bones and Sharp Teeth, February 16, 2009

By 

Sabra Embury (Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Midnight Picnic (Paperback)

"Bram pulls into the parking lot half asleep and the crunch of gravel under his tires becomes the crunch of bones. Something screams."

These two introductory sentences, regular compound and micro, foreshadow much of what's to come in Antosca's dark story of a lonely man's vigilante misadventure into dimensions of ghosts, superimposed onto dim/glowing landscapes of strip malls and blackberry trails.

Juxtaposed: bone-chilling images borrowed from monstrous childhood nightmares and innocence invoking sympathy from tragic events--ravaging mortality into realms of complacent immortality.

From the beginning, to "Midnight Picnic"'s compelling back-seat journey into a satisfying conclusion, Bram's indignant obligation to find a child killer and destroy him is a fantastic ride into the unknown.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No Picnic, October 26, 2009

By 

Kaolin Fire "GUD Magazine" (Acton, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Midnight Picnic (Paperback)

Midnight Picnic is GUD contributor Nick Antosca's second novel, but is written with such assurance and skill that it might more easily be his twenty-second. On the first page, Antosca draws the reader in to unwilling protagonist Bram's world, which is about to get uncannily strange.

Bram's living a mundane, drab existence over a bar called Moms until the night he comes home tired and accidentally runs over the bar's dog, Baby. His attempts to succour the injured animal show him to be basically decent, but ineffectual. He wants to do the right thing, yet gives up when it becomes too difficult. This is the issue Bram will have to face up to as the story continues.

The skeleton of a young boy is found, and his spirit makes a connection with Bram that takes him on a nightmare journey into the land of the dead. Here, he learns far more about himself--and the dead and living--than he ever thought possible. However, at heart, Midnight Picnic is not a ghost story. It's a tale of redemption and the healing effects of time.

The central premise is that, given time to reflect, we can all come to a realisation of where we have gone wrong in our lives. No matter how despicable our crimes, redemption is possible, but it comes not from outside, but from the person themselves, from their changed relationship with themselves and the other dead. It's a powerful message in a book that refuses to label anyone as evil.

Only Adam is depicted as incapable of this process, perhaps because he died too young. For him, time to reflect has only bred hatred; he is locked into childish ideas of right, wrong, and punisment.

All Antosca's characters are vividly realised, from Bram's lost soul of an on-off girlfriend to the old man who lives in the woods, and has, in the past, done whatever it took to stay hidden there. Before vengeance comes for him, he seems to have already learnt his lesson, telling another intruder on his solitude, "I wouldn't do anything to you...".

This book is relatively short, but the reader needn't feel short-changed. There's a complete story here, one that compels as well as entertains. It's fascinating to travel with Bram and Adam into the lands of the dead, a place into which the living often stray, unawares, a land that's depicted as chillingly as the dead landscape of Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

An excellent book to read on Halloween, with your head under the covers and a heavy flashlight handy.

[Review written by Debbie Moorhouse for GUD Magazine]