Customer Reviews

Night of the Hunter/The

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book deserves a renaissance, or a rebirth, or something, because it is largely overlooked or ignored or simply nonexistent to an entire generation of readers who would undoubtedly love it as much as I did, and as much as the millions of people who turned it into a national bestseller in the 1950s. This tale of tragedy and suspense also offers some timeless commentary on religious hypocrisy and greed that are as relevant today as they were at the time.

Ostensibly about the plight of an eventually orphaned young brother and sister entrusted with a small fortune, and the villanous "preacher" who knows that they know where this fortune is, my perspective is that the book is as much a character study as it is a thriller. The characters in question are many, and greatly varied, ranging from the doomed parents to the well-meaning neighbors to the miscreant preacher, but the 10 year-old boy, John, is the most intriguing of them all. In the course of four chapters and an epilogue, a boy's innocence is lost in the most heartbreaking ways imaginable, yet in some way it is also restored by the story's end. If one of the central components of good literature is character transformation, we witness some truly extraordinary and entirely believable character evolution in the boy John, and the effect on the reader is so naturally emotional that we are blind to the mechanics of the author's manipulation. For me, that is the hallmark of excellent story telling.

This was Davis Grubb's finest hour as a novelist, and in my opinion it is every bit as good as any other piece of "classic" American literature. I rank this small masterpiece alongside such literary milestones as "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "East of Eden."

I bought this book in Italy, to read on the trains. I expected a routine crime thriller. It is much, much better than that. The Rev. Harry Powell is well known as one of the great villains. A great villain requires a great hero, and Grubb provides two of them. John Harper is very appealing in his devotion to his little sister Pearl, but it is Rachel Cooper that is the character that raises this book to the highest level. She has the capacity to change your life, with her capacity for goodness. She changed mine. What more could you ask for in a book?

Hemingway, Steinbeck, Tolstoy et al, will always have a place in the pantheon of literature. In this reader's opinion, this novel warrants a little niche in that pantheon for Davis Grubb, whose lean, muscular and evocative prose propels this thrilling story, driving it toward the inevitable conclusion.

Charles Laughton's movie based on this book was an interesting effort and well done, but if one hasn't read the unsentimental, un-varnished novel, then somewhere a potential reader is missing the juice. Like Laughton's screen effort the novel is indeed pregnant, but not at all unwieldly; rather, the book, slender as it is, is bursting with some of the best writing put to paper in any genre and is as good as anything ever written by the more prolific Masters.

Grubb's unpretentious style looms up from the pages like the reek of the bottom waters at river's edge. Subtle by turns, the terrifying game of hide-and-seek between light and shadow jumps at the most unexpected moments, just like the novel's villain with his knife.

Filled with archetypes and certainly many levels of meaning for interpretation by the reader, this is one novel one won't forget soon. It stalks memory and, personally, I find myself still returning to the book from time to time to savor a magnificently rendered mood, and a time, place and story that is as fresh and exciting now as it was almost half a century ago.

Writing true and honest profiles of such diverse characters, let alone children, is no easy thing, and Grubb's work is peopled with wholly believable characters who truly cast shadows, live and breathe, even in the periphery. This is part of the novel's triumph.

I cannot recommend Night of the Hunter too highly. It's simply a "must read" for anyone who loves good literature, fine writing --and isn't predjudiced against genre. In this beautiful, sinister work, Davis Grubb breaks the mold.

I don't want to review this tight, crisp and wonderfully lurid little potboiler, with its Jim Thompson feel, for its literary qualities - other reviews here have done that very well. I just want to alert potential buyers to how awfully produced this "Blackmask Online" edition is itself. From the badly-reproduced publicity still from the Charles Laughton movie on the front cover, to the colors bleeding on the publisher's logo on the back cover, to the mangled English of the back cover blurb, this book has the feel of those pirate novels you buy in South-East Asian cities. Inside, it's worse! Everything is tightly packed: there's no evidence of the hand of a designer with the least sense of...well...design. Or font. Or spacing. Or layout. Epigraphs are crammed at the tops of chapters as inelegantly as you could possibly make it. Poetry in the epigraphs (by Donne, Hopkins for instance) is laid out as prose not poetry. Paragraph indents are so small you can barely see them. Apostrophes in slang or shortened words are back-to-front. Random underscores appear from nowhere at the beginnings of paragraphs. An execrable production, and a real moneyspinning rip-off. I just wanted to make that point here: if you like the physical appearance and feel of books as well as what's inside, you'll be very disappointed when this one turns up. I'm surprised a more reputable publisher didn't still have the rights to this (Blackmask don't even seem to know the protocols of copyright pages, so we don't even know who the original publishers were, merely from looking at this book). I'd recommend getting a nice old copy of this gem of a book from a second-hand site like Abebooks. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to treat this as a lesson learned, and remember not to buy from Blackmask again.

With the publication of a new edition Amazon seems to have deleted the earlier reviews. They were unanimous in their praise for Night of the Hunter,

I bought the book in Italy to read on the trains. There wasn't much of a selection. I expected a routine crime thriller.

We have cheapened superlatives to the point where they really don't resonate. If I tell you it's the best book I have ever read, I may be setting your expectations so high that it can never meet them.

It did change my life.

Grubb provides one of the best "bad guys" in literature: the Reverend Harry Powell. A bad guy needs a hero. Powell is so bad that it takes two heroes to offset him.

The first is John Harper, the older brother. If you happen to have two children -- an older brother and a younger sister -- the story of their relationship has immense power.

The second is Rachel Cooper. She is my favorite character in my reading life.

She is immensely strong, with a forgiving nature. It was her ability to forgive that helped me to forgive someone -- to change my life.

Of course Robert Mitchum is well known for having played Reverend Powell in the movie -- for good reason. Lillian Gish played Rachel Cooper. She was wonderful.

The movie continues to grow in stature, while the novel seems to be forgotten. (There is a musical version of Night of the Hunter out there somewhere.) This is an unfortunate, as Grubb deserves to be recognized as a great writer.

I've been reading my way through all his works -- that I can find. Fools Parade is the most accessible -- terrific, and Shadow of My Brother is a very powerful story of racism that, unfortunately, is still highly relevant.

Grubb wrote with strong emotional content. The emotional power of Voices of Glory is so high that I haven't had the composure to read it yet. I'm trying to understand how he did that, to be able to write like that myself.

Night of the Hunter has always been one of my favorite films: eerie, atmospheric, gripping are just a few words that come to mind for this masterpiece, the only film made by silent film star Charles Laughton. It gets better with each viewing. I only got around lately to reading Davis Grubb's source material and it's just as amazing and mesmerizing as the movie. If you like a book that gives you genuine chills, yet still creates really sympathetic characters, give this one a try. Of course, if you're like me and loved the movie, you owe it to yourself to see why they wanted to make it into a movie.

Davis Grubb, The Night of the Hunter (Prion, 1953)

It took me three or four tries to get myself immersed in The Night of the Hunter, the only book Davis Grubb wrote that is still remembered (and that because the film based on it was the only one Charles Laughton ever directed). The first few times I attempted to read the book, I'd wrestle with the first few pages, which are truly mediocre and absent of the "astonishing verbal magic" (quote attributed to the New York Times) blurbed on the front cover of Prion's edition. I'd put it down, walk away from it, and pick it up a month or so later and try again. It took me until the last weekend in August to get far enough with it that it grabbed me, which happened about twenty pages in. And honestly, "grabbed" is not the right word; while this is noir through and through, it never really demands your attention as much as it does whisper for it.

Loosely based on the story of Harry F. Powers, "the Bluebeard of Moundsville" (a lonelyhearts killer), The Night of the Hunter is the story of Harry Powell, an itinerant preacher and serial killer of women (we're never entirely sure how many, but at the opening of the novel it is somewhere between six and a dozen) who meets a man condemned for murder in prison. The guy stole ten thousand bucks, which was a whole lot of money in the Depression era, and hid it somewhere. Wouldn't tell anyone, not even his wife. Powell aims to find out where that money is, and decides to take the most direct way possible--marrying the widow, Willa Harper. All seems to be going well, except that John, Willa's son, takes an instant dislike to Powell, just as John's sister Pearl takes an instant liking to him. But still, it seems Willa was telling the truth--her husband never told her where the money was hid. In fact, only two people know...

Grubb's language is thick and slow, like Ohio River water in the calm after a storm, and modern readers used to the sleeker, faster-paced tales of writers like Grisham and Kellerman are going to have a hard time getting used to it even after you get to the point where the plot catches hold of the hem of your garment. Linger over it, however, and you will find it is worth your time. My main criticism of the book I would probably never have come up with without seeing the movie; the big plot twist of where the money is hidden, which James Agee left to the last few frames to reveal in his film script, is revealed here less than halfway through the book (considerably earlier if you're paying attention). In my mind that cuts out a lot of suspense that Grubb could have played with, not to mention alternate explanations (the oft-repeated sentiment that the money was tied around a rock and tossed into the Ohio... I can't remember if any of that ever made it into the film, but it would certainly have more resonance if you didn't already know where the money was). Still, I can't fault Grubb, who was nominated for the National Book Award for this tale, for being improved upon by so mighty a light as James Agee, one of the best dramatists to ever take up a pen. (As a quick note, The Night of the Hunter was one of only two original full-length works Agee produced specifically for the silver screen; the other, The African Queen, is equally a classic.) But it still leaves an undertone of what might have been.

If you're familiar with noir, you know that there's no such thing as a happy ending, and yet Grubb still manages to hand you a happy ending, but make it the bleakest sort of happy ending possible. That's got to count for something. ***

Having recently seen and greatly enjoyed the 1955 film "The Night of the Hunter", I decided to read the original novel by Davis Grubb. I can honestly say I was not let down.

It is the 1930s and West Virginia is crushed under economic depression. Stalking the Ohio Valley, a psychopathic self-proclaimed preacher named Harrey Powell is hunting for widows to slay for their money. The novel really takes off when Powell arrives at the residence of a recently executed bank robber looking for $10,000. The story itself is interesting in that it is largely told from the point of view of the children of Powell's latest victim. The older sibling, a nine year old boy named John is the story's main protagonist and quickly has his doubts about the newly arrived preacher who is about to become his stepfather. What follows is a story of suspense, the loss of childhood innocence, and the dark reaches of the human heart.

Inevitably comparisons will arrise between the novel and film. On the positive side, the novel provides greater background on some of the characters. On the more negative side, the novel features more cursing which really doesn't add anything to the story in this particular case. The novel was still a good read though. However, I personally must admit to enjoying the film better. Robert Mitchum as Harry Powell and Lillian Gish as Elizabeth Cooper portrayed their characters with more depth than mere words could provide. I realize some literary purists will likely disagree with my opinion, but in this case the film was very close in plot to the book (practically line by line in many cases) and the acting as well as the atmospheric cinematography simply tipped the scales in favor of the film.

This is an excellent thriller and it's very grim. It's surprisingly not dated for a book from the fifties. Excellent and highly recommended

In NIGHT OF THE HUNTER, (original pub. Date: 1953), Davis Grubb offers up a simple story of murder in the pursuit of a small fortune to raise our awareness of larger issues concerning the dangers of hijacked faith, deadly temptations in desperate times, the plight of neglected and abandoned children, and the power of an individual to right, at least in a small way, the wrongs of society.

Summarized, in the depth of the Great Depression, Ben Harper, a despairing family man, awaits execution by hanging in a cell with an auto thief who is more: "His name was Harry Powell but everyone called him Preacher..." and he, unbeknownst to authorities, is a serial killer of widows. Ben has hidden the loot from a bank robbery gone awry; he killed two men in a confused moment. He refuses to reveal the whereabouts of the money to officials--even though doing so might spare his life--and Willa, his wife. Only his children, John, nine, and Pearl, four, know he secreted the cash in Pearl's doll. Before apprehension, he secured their promise to divulge the secret to no one. John takes his pledge to heart. That Ben did not reveal the hiding place to Willa causes her wrenching anxiety and even greater suffering later. In prison, Preacher relentlessly inveigles Ben for the whereabouts, but Ben goes to the gallows with his secret. Afterwards, Preacher finds his way to Ben's home. He wins over Willa, Pearl, and friends, the friends encouraging her to marry him, which she does. John, however, resists, because in the first minutes of meeting, he understands what Preacher really wants and Preacher discerns John knows where the money is hidden. Employing devious and psychologically damaging tactics, Preacher hounds and persecutes John, stealing away the boy's and Pearl's mother, turning the family's friends against John. Finally, fearful and seeing no alternative, John flees with Pearl. Preacher pursues them, obsessed by the money. John and Pearl live as feral children, until they end up in the yard of Rachel Cooper, who proves to be more than a match for Preacher.

Several themes emerge in the story. Religion's dangers lay in the potential for believers to be manipulative, hypocritical, and deluded. Preacher is a self-proclaimed stump minister of the fire and brimstone school, a man who has the words Love tattooed on the fingers of his right hand and Hate and those of his left, intertwining them regularly to illustrate for others and to visualize for himself the battle between good and evil. But he is psychotic and a psychopath, a man who justifies his actions as the will and guidance of God, as in this introduction to him:

"He would pay his money and go into a burlesque show and sit in the front row watching it all and rub the knife in his pocket with sweating fingers; seething in a quiet convulsion of outrage and nausea at all that ocean of undulating womanhood beyond the lights; his nose growing full of it: the choking miasma of girl smell and cheap perfume and stogie smoke and man smell and the breath of ten-cent mountain corn liquor souring in the steamy air; and he would stumble out at last into the enchanted night, into the glitter and razzle-dazzle of the midnight April street, his whole spirit luminous with an enraptured and blessed fury at the world these whores had made. That night in his dollar hotel room he might crouch beneath the guttering blossom of the Welsbach flame above the brass bed and count his resources and think to himself: Time to go out again and preach the word? Or is it time for another one? Is it time yet, Lord? Time for another widow? Say the word, Lord! Just say the word and I'm on my way!"

And Preacher is crafty and manipulative, exemplified by how he turns everyone against John, including the boy's own mother. Willa succumbs to a perilous religious fervor bred in her conflictions of inadequacy and guilt by the scheming of the Preacher. Belief consumes and blinds Icey Spoon, a Harper family friend. Preacher is a man of God; she believes him implicitly. When husband Walt dares to express a smidgen of doubt, she browbeats him into submission, and delivers Willa, John, and Pearl into the clutches of the demon in Godly guise. Unquestioning belief results in no good. Icey is also hypocritical, as in the end she is on the vanguard of all who turn against the one they praised in the beginning.

Ben Harper is an everyman of sorts, a good man in an untenable situation. He loves his wife and his family. He wants to do his best for them. He has the American consumerist aspiration. But he realizes he will never achieve enough to satisfy his conception of what they deserve. To seal his fate, the Great Depression has insured he and they will get nowhere. So, he resorts to armed bank robbery, a heist pitifully ill conceived and with an inevitably disastrous outcome. He's not a bad guy; he's a victim of a bad system.

As hopeless as this sounds, there is hope in the form of the boy, John, and a savior, Rachel Cooper. Though only nine, John's nobility, fidelity, perceptiveness, and courage shine from start to finish. His two goals, at which he is successful, are to keep his promise to his father and to protect his sister. Apart from Rachel, he is the only person able to see through Preacher's fiery declarations of righteousness. And Rachel, religious but also rational, loving but also hard-edged, provincial but also worldly, good of heart but also never weak or deluded, is salvation, for innumerable abandoned children of the Depression, and for John and Pearl. In a world where hope is hard to come by, there are Rachels, and there should be more of them.

As Grubb wrote: "To Rachel the most dreadful and moving thing of all was the humbling grace with which these small ones accept their lot. Lord save the little children! .... For each of them has his Preacher to hound him down the dark river of fear and tonguelessness and never-a-door. Each one is mute and alone because there is no word for a child's prayer and no ear to heed it if there were a word and no one to understand it if it heard. Lord save little children! They abide and they endure."

Highly recommended as a thriller, for the determination, and the nobility of a child, and a moral tale.

Other thrillers with demon-type killers that might interest you include: Jim Thompson's THE KILLER INSIDE ME. Published in 1952, pulp when first issued but today regarded as the epitome of American crime noir. Lou Ford is a lawman you never want to make the acquaintance of. Stephen King's MISERY features the unforgettable Annie Wilkes, a worshipful fan the dread of anyone. Joyce Carol Oates's ZOMBIE puts you into the mind of a serial killer who tries and tries again to create a sexual serf. My I, KILLER, in which a narcissistic murderer confronts his past in the form of mysterious visitors and falls to a little girl named Sarah.