If you were to ask me for a list of the best horror novels ever written, A Manhattan Ghost Story by TM Wright would be close to the top every time. It was followed a couple of years later by a sequel, The Waiting Room. And many years later by this slim volume.
Abner Cray, lead character in the first book, and object of the search by his best friend Sam Feary in the second, is now living, or maybe not, in a house in the woods with a legion of unwanted guests.
His reality has fragmented almost completely. This book takes the form of a journal detailing his current existence and flashbacks to what led him here, with musings on life and death and the differences between the two states.
It's a weirdly compulsive, totally fractured and not 100% sane narrative. It bounces from subject to subject, flashback to present to nightmare fuel at the drop of a hat.
It has a very similar feel to the TM Wright I reviewed a couple of months back. It seems like his later books became quite samey, with a lot of repetition of the same verbal tics and narrative trickery, and legible story coming in in second place behind the style.
The style is very readable and very creepy when it works. It insinuates itself into your brain without you noticing. The horror comes in quietly at an existential level rather than being immediately frightening. I still prefer his books that had more conventional narratives along with the existential terror.
This is one for Wright completists like me I think. It's difficult to find online for a reasonable price. For the casual fan, read Strange Seed, Manhattan Ghost Story, The Woman next Door, The School, the Playground or any of his books from that sort of era. They're more satisfying reads than this one as good as this one is.
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