Customer Reviews

The Keeper

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(17)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I was very excited to read Langan's book, because female horror writers are special for a lot of reasons. The first chapter absolutely knocked it out of the park. She is great at building dread, and the idea of a town haunted by a woman is very original. While I prefer prose that's something akin to prose poetry, Langan's book has strong, solid writing that worked well for this bleak, frightening story.

The only problem was that about 3/4 into the book everything ground to a halt for me. As realistic as they were, the characters never felt very likable. So, when Very Bad Things started happening to them, I lost interest in the story. I suspect it was because the characters were already dead in many ways and therefore it felt over the top. I soldiered on because a friend of Langan's had loved the book so much that I wanted to give it a fair read. Ultimately I liked the ending and was glad I got there, but that was a difficult bridge to cross.

That said, I suspect future books by Langan will shine even more brightly. I'll definitely be staying tuned!

I typically read over two-hundred novels a year, and THE KEEPER is one of the best written debuts I've read in 2006. This is a top-shelf effort.

The quality of the writing in this novel is simply superb. It's hard to believe that Langan is a first-time novelist. Her prose is both vivid and compelling. Langan has a real gift for characterization and all of the people in this book really came alive for me. In the end, I made an emotional investment in the story and characters of THE KEEPER, which is something that rarely happens with most books I read.

The high quality of Langan's writing compensates for the somewhat creaky plot. This is a relatively slow-paced novel, with a great deal of prose devoted to the inner conflicts of multiple characters. If you're looking for fast moving suspense story, you will probably be disappointed with this novel. There isn't a great deal of action in this novel until the final few scenes.

THE KEEPER is essentially a well crafted literary novel with supernatural overtones. It is more of a spooky read than a thrilling one. You either like this type of novel or you don't. I enjoyed it throughly, and I eagerly look foward to Langan's future books. If she learns to tighten her plotting a bit, she could become the next Peter Straub in my opinion.

I'd actually more or less given up on horror novels as a genre. While there are a few contemporary horror writers that I enjoy, I have given up the steady diet of supermarket horror that I read as a teenager. However, I made an exception in this case and actually ordered the Langan book from Amazon. This is largely because a great many of those "few contemporary horror writers" who I still read published hugely glowing blurbs about The Keeper. Peter Straub credited her with combining a "genuinely poetic sensibility" and a "taste for horror's most bravura excesses". Ramsey Campbell praised the quality of the prose. With chops like these, it almost seemed as though I had to love the book.

Probably unsurprisingly, I didn't love it. I didn't hate it either. Honestly, if I *had* just picked it up at the supermarket somewhere in upstate NY then I probably would have actually been quite pleasantly surprised. Langan isn't at all a bad writer, and seems to have a dab hand at the kind of real little details that generally work very well in horror and supernatural fiction. Liz was often very likable, and I could easily visualize her in her surroundings.

The problem was that even though she got the verisimilitude right, Langan somehow didn't succeed in making me care about the characters. I suspect that she tried to draw the story too widely. I needed to care about the town as much as I cared about the main characters. And that never came together. She might have done better to make it a claustrophobic family story. I suspect that by narrowing the focus, Susan may have been more genuinely frightening. The wider scope on the whole town meant that Langan resorted to pretty typical horror tricks-- vicious dogs, giant spiders, yadda yadda. It kind of felt like pastiche, and the rest of the work didn't really deserve pastiche.

All this said, The Keeper is a first novel. And it probably even counts as a first novel with a fair degree of promise. There's enough in here for me to want to keep an eye on her work and see where she goes.

I picked up this book at a grocery story on a whim, not really knowing what to expect. I read praise by Peter Straub at the top of the cover and thought "Well, let's try it."
I was blown away! This novel is written very well and includes creepy and scary stuff that might make your sleep a little restless.
I loved it! Langan is a wonderful writer. Poetic,descriptive without being too Faulknerian, she is awesome.
I cannot wait for a follow-up.

Back in Horror's heyday, the masters (Straub, King, et al.) would crank out 500 to 800 page apocalyptic tomes, usually set in some small town filled with secrets, that never seemed to end. At the end of these novels, everything would blow up. I was never a huge fan, not because I didn't like horror (I love it), but because for me, horror works best with a tighter, smaller focus, with an emphasis on atmosphere (I'm a Ramsey Campbell fan). Give me dread over explosions any day. Langan's Keeper is from the "tome" era. To its credit, at 380 pages, it is shorter, but around page 260 or so, I was horrified that I had a hundred pages more to go. A character I couldn't stand wasn't dead yet (squeeze harder Susan!), a giant spider had showed up out of nowhere, and it just kept raining. (Actually, I liked the steady use of rain as a mood establishing device. For some reason I was reminded of Stewart O'nan's masterpiece The Night Country. Must be that Jamie Lee Curtis time of year.) Another problem for me was that I never bought into the core cause of the horror, so to some extent, from early on, I felt I was on a long march.

On the other hand, Langan can write. She creates believable characters (I really liked Liz), though sometimes there were conversations that just went on and on without really adding momentum to the story. Langan also has, like King, a good eye for things contemporary. The teens in the Keeper are modern day versions of King's 70s kids. The music, the clothes, the talk, all seemed right to me. But hey, it's a first novel, so ignore the novel's glowing heavy weight blurbs and take it for what it is. The Keeper does have some effective moments, and to my mind is much closer to real horror than another heavily touted new writer, Cherie Priest. This may seem like an overly critical review, but in part this is due to the promise I see with this writer. She seems enthusiastic about the genre, and contemporary horror needs new blood. There's a new crop coming (Lebon, Keene, Link, Priest), and Langan, I suspect, after another novel or so, will be viewed as a major figure in that group.

Langan is a damned good writer. Damned good. Her prose is exquisite without being overblown. Her characters are believable. She creates a vivid place that I can still see days after finishing the novel. I didn't understand some of her plot points (giant spider?), but maybe I was rushing through the text at that point, hypnotized by her prose, and wondering what would happen next, and didn't pay attention. In this way, the novel reminds me of "A Choir of Ill Children" by Tom Piccirilli or "Lisey's Story" by Stephen King -- writing so mesmerizing that you read on, entranced, even if some of it is beyond you at that point.

This book was well written and I believe Ms. Langan had a fresh idea in a tired genre, but she works so hard to build the story, which I believe she succeeds at, but doesn't give a thorough explanation at the end.

The story starts off very creepy and reminded me of the great horror novel, Ghost Story. All the elements were there, but when all hell breaks loose around the last 1/3 of the book, it gets confusing and boring. The author writes very cryptically about what is happening and why, and while she knows what she is trying to get across to the readers, I doubt very highly if most readers get it. The incest part of the story ruins the horror portion, the two just don't go together.

The characters for the most part are strong and can each stand on their own two feet. Ms. Langan does a fantastic job keeping everyone consistent with their individual personalities. If it weren't for a confusing and silly ending, this book would have shined. I would definately give her another try.

I haven't enjoyed a horror book like this in a long, long time. These characters are masterfully portrayed. I sat down on the train with it and before I knew it I was fifty pages in and dying to read more. Reminded me of the sincerity and intensity of early King ! Highly recommended.

I read this book in two days on a rainy weekend, which is the perfect time to do it, considering the harsh weather that pervades in this horrifying work. I just had to know what was going to happen with Susan Marley, who is one of the most compelling characters in literary horror since Carrie. Can't wait for Langan's next book.

Am I extraordinary because I was not impressed with this book even though there was no charge for it on my Kindle? The story is an incestuoous relationship between a father and his eldest daughter, its effect on the child's mother and younger sister, and its creepy effect on the small town. There is also the background of long-term environmental devastation to the town itself and its residents which pre-dates the story itself. When the author listed her credits and acknowledgments at the end of the book, it all made sense as she is completing a degree in environmental engineering and was showcasing her concerns over damaging our environment.