Customer Reviews

Mr. X

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(24)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

I've always liked Lovecraft stories, but Poe's poetry has always seemed slightly boring to me. Somehow Straub has melded the two and I think Mr. X is a masterpiece. After reading all of the Tim Underhill and Tom Passmore related books, I decided it was time to read Mr. X and I was not disappointed.

I haven't stopped thinking about this book since I finished it. Ned Dunstan has an odd assortment of relatives that range from a homicidal maniac to deformed cripples with birth defects to kleptomaniacs with enhanced mental powers. It's hard to figure out if the narrator is Ned or his "brother". He may possibly have a split personality. I plan on reading it again to see if I missed a few clues.

I like thrillers. I like mysteries. I like almost anything so long as it is well-written and interesting. I did not like this book.

After reading this novel, I was left with several unanswered questions and a feeling of dissatisfied confusion. Were Ned's family the descendants of former gods and demons, or just your average psychic inbreeders? Did he have a twin brother? Who and what exactly is Mr. X? Should I care?

From reading the other posted reviews, I'm guessing that this is a book you either love or hate. I didn't care for this story, but that doesn't mean I prefer "book candy" and wouldn't know a good book if it bit me in the a**. I prefer a story with a good plot that grabs your attention and won't let go, not a story that is laid out in a confusing manner, jumps back and forth, and then abruptly ends.

My opinion is that Peter Straub needs to stop being so impressed with his talent as a writer and get back to basics. Maybe a new editor to gently coax him back into telling good stories instead of showing off. Just my two cents, but this book is not worth wasting your time.

It pains me to say anything bad about a Peter Straub book. I have been a fan for nearly 20 years. Koko still rates as one of my all time favorite reads, bar none. Mystery & The Throat were sorely disappointing, but Hellfire Club promised a return to form. A return to the horror genre by my favorite author...well, what more could I ask for? Much, in retrospect. Mr X contains more ponderous, pretentious prose than any Straub novel to date. Descriptions of places, persons, and situations drag on ad nauseum. Even the names of characters are distractingly silly. Do yourself a favor, skip this palid, self- important attempt at a modern addition to Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, and read the original.

Straub seems to have reached the point where he or his publishers feel that every book MUST be big to be a bestseller. We are treated to lengthy descriptions of the frying of bacon and okra, serving no other point in the plot than to demonstrate that the protagonist's aunts are healthy eaters. You can almost sense him thinking, "Well, at least I'm filling pages!" The best scenes seem borrowed from MYSTERY, and nothing has the eerie resonance of his best work. A huge disappointment that never convinces for an instant. When I idly glanced at the next book in my stack (Graham Joyce's THE TOOTH FAIRY) and encountered economical, witty, sinewy prose, I knew I was never going to finish MR. X.

That Booklist fellow, I regret to say, biffed the old nail squarely on its head. The adjectives "lumbering" and "ramshackle" describe everything this misguided author, whom by the way I have known since early childhood, has produced over the past two decades. Long, long ago, he knew how to tell a story - simply, I mean, and in a manner progressing from A to Z unimpeded by digressions, whimsical interludes, and authorial pretensions - but he either has forgotten or chosen deliberately to ignore the most elementary rules of his craft. Here we have a tale of a Doppelganger told in the first person, and what does our hapless author decide to introduce? A second narrator, that's what, and even worse, this intrusive voice is that of the Doppelganger's father! One shakes one's head at such witless bravado. I agree, the novel does contain a small number of agreeable jokes, but these witticisms serve in no way to redress the pervasive air of ramshackle lumbering, in fact they lend it a certain wistful poignancy. Putney Tyson Ridge, Ph. D.

Then the horror/dark fiction/dark fantasy genre is in worse shape than I thought (or, perhaps the HWA, which gives the award, is in worse shape than I thought).

First of all - To the hardcore lover of horror, Lovecraftian themes have become like vampires - so familiar and overdone as to become cliche'. That means dealing with such themes obliges an author to put a new spin on an old idea, if the author is determined to take readers down such well-worn paths. In Mr. X, Straub doesn't.

Second of all - While we're on the subject of cliches...apply the above paragraph to the "evil other" cliche as well as the Lovecraftian one. Mr. X is the main character's father and not his alter ego, true, but close enough. Oh, and he's something of a serial killer, too, isn't he? That brings the cliche' tally to 3. Yawn, yawn, yawn...perhaps we should rename this novel "The Carnival of Cliche's"...

Third - Almost all, if not all, of the characters are two-dimensional. Here's your cookie-cutter "nice guy late bloomer", here's your cookie-cutter "free-spirited artist", here's your cookie-cutter "really evil guy who likes to kill cute babies and probably kick cute puppies, as well".

Straub's short intro to Poppy Z. Brite's "Are You Loathesome Tonight?" is miles above the writing in this novel in terms of being interesting and captivating, and up to the stylistic quality of which I know Peter Straub is capable.

Bottom line - worth the money if you need a cheap remedy for insomnia, but not worthy of any award, in my humble opinion.

I am on page 404 and I am determind to finish this book if it kills me. I think that it probably will.

The Peter Straub acid test - you'll either love it, or hate it.

Ned Dunstan comes from a very peculiar family. Some of them see things that haven't yet happened. Others can teleport. Or, apparently, be in more than one place at a time. Their offspring are - well, sometimes not quite right. Occasionally they have to be buried out in the Back Forty. Ned has been haunted by an "Other" since his childhood, some shadowy figure who seeks him and those around him out to do grievous harm. And he seems to have a twin, who his mother never told him about...or does he?

Along with Ghost Story, this is Straub's best-written and most carefully plotted book. Also like Ghost Story, it requires tremendous patience to read. Straub writes like a Chinese puzzle box, and in highly convoluted form, presenting bits and pieces of his story in altered time frames and from different perspectives. His plot is half Poe's "William Wilson," half Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror." It is more sci-fi or fantasy than true horror, and in fact the award it won was the World Fantasy Award, which is most appropriate. It's tricky and clever, but really satisfies in the end if you simply pay attention.

Won't be everyone's cup of tea, but this description should help you decide whether or not it will be yours.

Thank goodness I bought this used. This book reminded me of a lot of horror movies...great beginning, great premise....BIG LET DOWN in an Anne Rice "Taltos" way. Straub's other books are much more compelling and creepy.

I have enjoyed Peter Straub's books for years, especially The Throat and Mystery. Mr.X is not in their league. It is too slowly paced and way too long. The conclusion concerning Ned and Robert is not well crafted. The Lovecraftian themes miss the mark and the horror aspects just aren't there. Every author has a stinker of book now and then, and Peter Straub has his.