Home Sweet Hell
Written: Jun 26 '08
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Good characterization, satisfying conclusion
Cons: Poor writing, non-descriptive, too short, characters lacking logic.
The Bottom Line: An interesting, albeit imperfect read. Recommended to all those that want to know how The Folks ended.
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| countess_eva's Full Review: Ray Garton - The Folks 2: No Place Like Home |
Five years have slowly passed since Ray Garton’s The Folks and life has finally turned around for Andy. By the graciousness of Matthew Bollinger and his horde of wealth, Andy has undergone extensive plastic surgery, taking his once monstrous face and transforming it into a handsome visage. His perverted relationship with Amanda has persevered throughout the years, mostly due to her licentiousness, but the heat is finally waning. Andy has given into to the sickness of the Bollinger lifestyle, has agreed to run Matthew Bollinger’s empire, and has, through necessity, turned his eyes away from the rampant inbreeding and deformities accepting what cannot be changed and seeking to live a moderately happy life in a hellish home. But all that is about to change when Andy falls in love with a town girl and she returns his affection. Dismayed by a harsh rejection and seeking retribution, Amanda Bollinger plays the woman scorned to a tea, sending her vindictive and horrifically deformed brother Dexter into Andy’s happily ever after love life. What follows will be the culmination of a drama five years in the making as Garton reveals the grand finale envisioned in The Folks. Love and death, loyalty and betrayal, religion and animosity are all stirred together to create a bubbling brew of malice that will soon overflow and capture our host of characters in its obsidian depths. Welcome to the Bollinger house, home sweet hell.
Ray Garton is the author of over fifty novels, and in each book he seeks to present a unique concept and explore it to its murky depths. In this case, the concept was presented in the previous novel, The Folks and Garton did little to reiterate the previous story thus making this novel enjoyable only to those who have read The Folks. The story picks up five years after the events presented in the pervious novel and we once again return to the cobweb festooned domicile of the Bollingers, expecting instant waves of grief and depression to radiate from our sorrowing hero. But, this is not the case. Andy seems rather satisfied with his life; he has even taken up the hobby of bowling. He is handsome, more than aware of the fact, rich, pampered, and has overall forgotten his vow of five years previous to eliminate the Bollingers painfully. Hmm, me thinks the author forgot the previous plotline.
Along for the “new” atmosphere is a new writing style that, sadly, just didn’t come up to standards. Where was the flowering, flowing descriptions, the realistic dialogue, the editing? Yes, dear author, we, the devoted readers, picked up on the fact that you weren’t really trying. Having read several previous Garton novels including the award winner, Live Girls, I was shocked to see the choppy sentence fragments, the half hearted witless dialogue, and the overall lack of any effort or proof reading. Come on Garton, even small time reviewers like myself know to look over what we have written. An example of this, dare I say crappy, writing can be seen in the following quotation taken from page 11:
First I turned my head and looked into the snack bar, and she smiled and said something to the woman seated at the counter and didn’t even glance at me, acted like she was completely unaware of me. Then I turned my eyes front but looked at her from the corner of my eye, and she lifted her head and watched me until I stepped out of sight.
Where is the sense of the characters’ personalities, their emotions in these sentences? The story is still being related, but the magic is gone and even though the tale is told mainly through Andy’s eyes, the reader looses that special sense of him, that special in depth understanding of the character that only the writing can relay. Very poor Garton, must do better.
And, while it pains me to say it, the flaws mentioned above were not the only ones in Ray Garton’s latest addition to The Folks series. Like so many modern novelists, Garton suddenly decided that originality was a bit of a pain and went with the Friday the 13th feel, where dim witted characters in tube tops take showers as malicious alien beings ooze their way nosily up the stairs. You can practically see the author setting the characters into position so that they could be killed, eaten, run over a couple times, concussed with electric potatoes peelers, etc (okay, I may have added some stuff to that sentence). The point is that the characters, who had previously proven the capability of common sense, have now thrown it aside, deciding instead to have a covort with the illogic, leaving much needed weapons out of reach, staying in town while they know that their inhuman assassin is seeking them out, and spending piles of much needed cash on take out Chinese. Huh? Yes, dear reader, I think that you get the picture.
Coupled with this dalliance in the realms of the blatantly illogical is the overall shortness of the tale. Weighing in at a mere 155 pages, the novel wastes a great deal of time on stiff dialogue and seemingly inconsequential details, while ignoring the descriptiveness and the much anticipated gore. While Garton still manages to cram in his typical X-rated chapters, he lets the aura of terror slip, creating a more generic atmosphere with few scenes of peril and minimal attention to detail. Indeed, the story plods along slowly, delivering very little until the very end.
Nevertheless, when the conclusion is finally reached, the novel redeems itself, presenting a short and unelaborated finale that still managed to be shocking and satisfying. It was interesting to see how the drama begun in The Folks would finally conclude and the author added a nice little twist at the end making the novel worth reading although certainly not elevating it to the five star status of the first book. While the conclusion was not entirely unpredictable, it was still interesting to see how it was carried out and some elements were rather surprising. The only flaw in the conclusion was the lack of elaboration concerning certain key characters’ emotions as the drama spirals dramatically downward. Had this necessary element been present, the novel could have redeemed itself greatly.
Also, the author effectively maintained a well done characterization. While the writing style somewhat stifled the characters’ otherwise vibrant personalities, the author did put some effort into their background lives, allowing their personalities to be presented by an omnipotent narrator who revealed just enough of each new character’s background to make him or her empathetic and interesting to the reader. The Bollingers were also explained more in-depth particularly Matthew Bollinger and it proved interesting to see just how corrupt he really was despite his proclamation of being a “good Christian”. Amanda, while not as much of a centerpiece as in the first novel, was also allowed minimal presence but the drama was mainly concerned with Andy, his new paramour Roxanne, and the nightmarish Dexter as well as a few old faces brought back for the readers’ edification. Andy and Roxanne’s romance was surprisingly realistic and sweet for a horror novel interpretation and it was obvious that the author put a great deal of thought into their emotions and feelings concerning each other.
Because of the well done characterization and the conclusion, the novel, although not perfect, did maintain the reader’s interest, making him or her want to read until the end. While The Folks 2 was missing the aura of the first novel, it provided an interesting conclusion to the previous drama and satisfied the reader concerning the characters’ future lives. An interesting, albeit imperfect read. Recommended.
Countess_Eva
Countess_Eva
Other Works by Ray Garton:
Ravenous
Live Girls
Seductions
The New Neighbor
Zombie Love
Night Life
Crucifax Autumn
Lot Lizards
The Folks
The Folks 2: No Place Like Home
Darklings
Dark Channel
Serpent Girl
Café Purgatorium
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
countess_eva
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Location: Washington DC
Reviews written: 218
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