Number 34 - Carpenter's Farm - Josh Malerman

It's not often I can do this - go and read it for yourself for free.
//joshmalerman.com/carpenters-farm/?fbclid=IwAR3WnmKma0E_9dxChhwty8lehIphgJGE2VicbhbsUkeY69tASnf-ClZ484k

When the lockdown began, Josh Malerman started writing a new novel - online, a few chapters at a time, and completely free to anyone who wants to read it.

He finished it a couple of weeks back, and I finished reading it about an hour ago.

Just because he's given us all this book for free doesn't mean he's skimping out.  The usual Malerman quality shines through as normal.

The story follows a group of actor friends who become concerned about one of their group who left the big city a few months ago to live on a farm he'd just inherited in Michigan.  (I wonder how close to the town of Goblin Carpenter's Farm might be) .Oliver doesn't seem himself any more.  They're worried and go to check on him, except for the narrator who has an acting job he can't ditch at the time.

The narrative structure is unusual.  It's told in first person past tense but by a character who isn't at the farm for a lot of the story, and for most of the book he's telling us the story of what happened to the others second hand, at the same time as telling us what he was doing elsewhere as events at the farm went awry.

The actual weirdness takes a while to kick in past a few hints in early chapters although the storytelling style is great foreshadowing personified.  We know something is wrong, but we don't know what or how.

I'm not going to give any spoilers as to what is happening except that psychologically it's very twisted and a really marvellous idea, a very weird variation on the theme of one of my favourite Ray Bradbury stories. Something very strange is in the fields behind Carpenter's Farm. 

The unnamed narrator is very well drawn and his paranoia about his friends is shown to perfection.  We worry about these characters because he is so concerned. In the closing chapters we learn exactly how right he was to be worried.

This is vintage Malerman.  He's fast becoming one of the fixtures on the horror scene, consistently putting out novels of easy readability, great weird atmosphere and some startling originality.  No two of his books have been the same, yet they're all distinctly Malerman.

I can't wait for the new Bird Box novel - Malorie - due out in just a few short weeks. This one has really whet my appetite.