Customer Reviews

Nightshade

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(22)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I haven't read a John Saul novel in at least ten years. I picked up "NIGHTSHADE" at the library, and I have to tell you this is a thoroughly enjoyable book. It's well thought through, the plot is delicately planned, leading the reader this way and that. IT's a whodunit, a mystery, a family novel, a thriller, a detective story, but most of all a true ghost story. It had my heart pounding at times, and I had to read the final 200 pages well into the night to get to the end or I wouldn't have been able to sleep. Well done, Mr. Saul. Well done indeed.

Nightshade is a poisonous European plant, also known as Belladonna. This title implies that something is deteriorating rapidly - the world of New Hampshire's Hapgood family. Actually one more meaning, I'll mention it later in this review.

Let's start with the Hapgood house, we've Matt Moore, his mom Joan, his stepdad Bill Hapgood and his grandmom Emily Moore.

Life looks great and sweet but it starts turning to nightmare when Emily (she has Alzheimer's Disease, a brain disease that impairs mental and emotional functions) accidentally burns down her own house and moves in with the Hapgoods. Then Emily claimed Cynthia (who is Joan's sister and dead) has returned. Moreover, Matt starts to have erotic dreams that Cynthia satisfies herself on him and leaving behind the pungent scent of her Nightshade perfume. Then one day Bill is killed while hunting with Matt and no doubt Matt is then accused to be the killer. Finally, Joan is trying to find the real killer and the story continues...

The author weaves a fascinating prose with dark family incidents. Trepidation, dread, doom all gathering. It's a enjoyable read of horror and suspense.

Let me say this right up front: I like Saul's writing style. He has a way with words. BLACKSTONE CHORONICLES led me to this author, and I've tried several of his works since then.

With that said......NIGHTSHADE is the second Saul novel I've read in as many weeks. I was extremely disappointed in the other novel, and NIGHT only scores a bit higher due to some of the darker family issues raised in it. The Hapgoods appear for all the world to be a loving, happy, content family. That all shatters quite quickly when grandma Emily, suffering from Alzheimer's and seemingly intent on making everyone around her feel lower than dung, moves into the Hapgood's estate. Constantly comparing Joan Hapgood to her beautiful, smart but dead older sister, Cynthia, Emily strikes out to totally deflate her younger daughter. Teenage grandson, Matt, starts having violent, erotic dreams that plague him. Then the body count starts to rise. What ensues is an attempt to create a sharp psychological thriller. It almost succeeds. However, too much of the novel is repetitive with some passages being repeated almost word for word. The PSYCHO-like feel to the story is interesting, and as I stated above, Saul creates incredible word pictures. Unfortunately, the villain is too easily figured out very early in the novel, and not a lot actually happens through a great deal of the story. In its favor, NIGHT is a quick read that could be enjoyable if you are looking for light suspense or horror.

This novel brings out some very disturbing family dysfunctions. As in RIGHT HAND OF EVIL, Saul digs out those family secrets and weaves them in with the sinister aspects of his story. Child abuse, incest, and mental illness all come together here, but they are also all too neatly wrapped up without deeper inspection throughout this story. There was great potential for a darker sort of story. I give this 3 stars because of Saul's knack for word art, but I, for one, wasn't too enamored of the book overall.

With Nightshade, John Saul gets back to what he does best, giving birth to a story almost as chilling and compelling as his premier masterpiece Suffer the Children. Forget biomedical experimentation, genetic manipulation, and all of the other external forces that often lie behind Saul's plots; this book marks a return to good old-fashioned madness and horror. Of course, we start with the perfect all-American family-Joan Moore Hapgood, her son Matt, and husband Bill who has always thought of his step-son as his own true son. Suddenly, Joan's grim, bitter, nasty, Alzheimer's-afflicted mother almost burns her own house down and comes to live with the Hapgoods. Emily Moore is obsessed with her daughter Cynthia, the perfect child whom she refuses to believe is never coming back home to her. Immediately, Matt's nights are filled with the horrible nightmares he had not experienced since leaving Emily's home as a child to move to the home of his new step-father. Watching his mother-in-law tearing his happy family apart, Bill simply leaves his wife and son to the misery of Emily's company. A series of tragedies unfolds, affecting not only the family but the entire close-knit community. Matt changes into a haunted young man, seeing suspicion and dislike pointed toward him from everyone he has ever cared about. Misery turns to the ultimate tragedy, and the reader is left to ponder just who is responsible. Is it Matt, who looks guilty in the eyes of everyone else? Is it his aunt Cynthia, whose presence comes to permeate the house and exert an unhealthy influence on Matt's life in spite of the fact that she is long-dead? Or could it be someone or something else?

Saul hits a home run with this novel. Whatever suspicions the reader entertains, the truth is never truly known in spite of its foreshadowing, not until the ultimate conclusion. As the plot progresses, Saul slowly but surely increases the tension, drawing the reader further and further into this fascinating story. One is never really sure what to think about the action as it unfolds. Even when the true source of the horror is revealed a couple of chapters before the end, the heightened sense of expectation and worry for the characters so well-presented and seemingly real continues unabated. To some degree this is a ghost story, but it is better described as psychological horror. Madness makes for a much more compelling villain than outside entities, and that is why Nightshade stands as one of John Saul's most compelling novels. Filled with insanity, ghostly impressions, terror, murder, a bit of blood and gore, and a surprise or two at the end, Nightshade reveals the true talent that resides in the mind of an author too little appreciated by the horror community.

Joan Hapgood has a cozy, comfortable life at Hapgood Farm withher husband Bill and son Matt (from a previous relationship). That is, until the day her aging and increasingly senile mother, Emily Moore, sets her house on fire and Joan brings her to live at the farm. Emily is the mother from hell and makes life [extremely] intolerable for Joan's family. .... The psychological suspense is unrelenting as John Saul leads the reader through a tangle of fractured relationships, unearthly jealousy, repercussions of child abuse, fragile egos, and injured psyches held together with blood revenge. It becomes pretty clear in the last quarter of the book what's going on, but the ending will still sucker-punch you. There aren't many books I feel compelled to finish the same day I start them. This was one of them.

This is the first John Saul book I have read. I can only hope his other books are better than this one. If not, I really don't see how he could have sold so many books.

The story opens intrigueingly with a flashback to a nightmareish episode of child abuse. However, it descends into a standard tale of((((Spoiler)))) a woman with a split personality. Her dead sister's "ghost" begins to take over and start killing members of her family. This "ghost" is able to to overpower other people very quickly, but it is never explained how this rather slightly built woman is able to do this.

An annoying aspect of the writing is how the author has the characters hear or see something, then quickly say "No! This can't be happening! This isn't possible!" These repetitive exclamations got very boring.

Having read many Stephen King and Dean Koontz stories, I had hope this author's writing would be along those lines. However, if this book is representative of Mr. Saul's writing, then he is clearly inferior to those writers.

Never judge a book by it's cover...as an author this can't be stressed enough...as a reader, I couldn't resist! Unfortunately, I was wrong in this case. The cover was awesome and promised a haunting tale that the story just didn't deliver. I thought I'd never finish this book! It grabbed my attention at the beginning, but by the third chapter, I felt as if I had read the same thing over and over. This happens throughout much of the book as Mr. Saul builds to the stories climax. This could have been a very good psychological thriller and a real page-turner, if it had been told in half the length. Instead I found myself putting it down and walking away, waiting sometimes days before I picked it up again then once again becoming frustrated with the same scenario's, bearing slightly different descriptions. This is a classic example of once hitting the best seller list, always remaining there...we should all be so lucky!

I got this book from my Aunt, who gives me "bags of books" to read. Usually I don't find many I love but this grabbed me. I was expecting your usual ghost story but instead, got a thriller that kept me reading all night. It is rather dark, but I didn't "figure it out" until almost the very end, which is unusual for me! Everytime I thought the book was ending, something else popped up to surprise me.

John Saul got started writing masterful tales of families that go beyond being merely dysfunctional. I have often wondered if Mr. Saul had a good childhood, after reading his novels focusing on evil children, weak parents, stifling relatives. John left that behind for a while, but returned with the rather disappointing "Right Hand of Evil," and now his latest shocker, "Nightshade." Since the plot has been discussed several times, no need to summarize. Suffice to say, this is a nasty little novel, full of incest, sexual frustrations, murder, gore, and extremely unlikeable characters. Saul is very good with this genre, and he is at his best in this novel. Although there are lapses in suspense and evidence of some "padding," the novel works as an eerie ghost story----and you have to ask, are we dealing with possession or split personalities? Who is the child in the beginning of the book? What happens at the end with Kelly and Matt? As usual, Saul infuriates us with the demise of one of the most likeable characters in the book, but he has always done this. You know when you read a John Saul book, no one is safe from the grim reaper. But enjoy the book for what it is---an offering from a master at creating really unearthly families!

Nightshade is the first book I've read of Saul's in many a year, and turned out to be pleasantly entertaining thriller. For the first 2/3 of the book, Nightshade pleasantly reminded me of the original HAUNTING movie. Psychological in nature, we wonder does the ghost of Cynthia really exist, or does she live only in the mind of the mother, Joan? Only in the final 1/3 does the book veer sharply out of psychological horror into a more graphic vein. Other aspects of the book that I liked: the characterization is very good. I came to feel something for each of the characters, whether it be hatred, concern, etc. With the possible exception of Joan's mother, all the characters are fully fleshed-out. Another nice point, and somewhat rare for a "horror" novel, is that the characters actions all seem legit. The actions they perform all seem to be what a regular person would do under the situation(s). No one develops superhuman characteristics (such as heroism) in the last pages of the book as seems to norm for a novel of this sort. This is a nice surprise. And, the book kept me reading. I'd have to describe this book as a definite page-turner. Only a few quibbles kept me from giving this book 5 stars. Some of the action and passages are a bit repetitive. A good example is that I don't know how many times we read that a character thinks they are alone in a room, hears something, then "spins around". Also, the action at book's end is a bit predictible. Lastly, the book is suspenseful, but unfortunately, not genuinely horrifying. Saul's attempts to actually horrify the reader fail with me because the action(s) or the gore felt more like they were thrown in for the potential effect more than the fact that it actually needed to be included/described. But those minor complaints aside, Nightshade is an enjoyable, satisfying thriller, better when the horror is psychological and implied than when it explodes to being realistic and graphic, but very good oveall.