Monday's Reviews Today: A 'Ghost' Story and A Blind Man's Look at Life

-- Publishers Weekly, 4/7/2006

Sneak peeks of next week's reviews: In his debut spookfest, Ghost Road Blues, Jonathan Maberry explores what happens in a tourist town that relies on its scary past when history comes back to haunt it. And in his memoir about losing his sight at an early age, Cockeyed, Canadian professor Ryan Knighton talks about the lights going out on life with wit and humor.

Ghost Road Blues
Jonathan Maberry. Pinnacle, $6.99 (480p) ISBN 0-7860-1815-1

Maberry supplies plenty of chills, both Earth-bound and otherworldly, in this atmospheric horror novel, the first of a trilogy. Thirty years after citizens of Pine Deep, Pa., killed the serial killer known as the Reaper, ending his hold on their town, the village enjoys a quiet idyll and a tourist-friendly reputation as "the most haunted town in America." But gearing up for its annual Halloween celebration, the town is unprepared for the real haunts stirring in their corn fields, seeking to finish what the Reaper started. Switching among a large cast of characters, Maberry builds suspense by degrees, in the process exploring the fully realized community of Pine Deep. Showing his smalltown Americans at their worst—through domestic abuse, religious fanaticism and cowardice—Maberry proves how everyday, evening –news–grade sadism can dovetail neatly with capital-E Evil and the supernatural big guns that carry it out. This is horror on a grand scale, reminiscent of Stephen King's heftier works (The Stand, Needful Things) and just as dense with detail; though it simmers a bit too long, and the payoff doesn't quite measure up, Maberry can be forgiven—as long as he fulfills his grisly promises in the sequel. (June)

Cockeyed: A Memoir
Ryan Knighton. Public Affairs, $25 (288p) ISBN 1-58648-329-3

Knighton, who teaches at Capilano College in Vancouver, started going blind in his teens, and in this hilarious and unsentimental-yet-moving memoir, he tells what it was like to lose his eyesight. He was born in the 1970s, grew up in British Columbia, and by 1987 was showing signs of poor vision. He began losing his sight early enough that the timeframes of his coming-of-age and his coming-of-blindness overlap. Milestones such as his first driving experiences and his first relationships with girls that would have been ordinary for other teenagers were anything but for him. As he moved into adulthood, he also moved further into sightlessness, yet he turns the story into something so bracing and unmawkish that it reads like a travelogue—you can't wait to know where he's going next, whether it's to attend college in Vancouver, teach English in South Korea, or get married. Wit can be a weapon, but can also be a kind of walking stick; being so gifted clearly guided Knighton long before anything began to happen to his eyes. Luckily for his readers, he was also gifted with a different kind of care and clear-sightedness, never stumbling into the maudlin. The book is a way to see life through another lens, an invitation to take a journey that no reader should refuse. (June)

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