Goblin - Josh Malerman

 

Goblin is a novel told in six novellas all following different characters in the town of Goblin, Michigan.  Through these different stories, we get to find out more about the lore behind the town and the odd events that occur there.  Some of these events are stranger (and more horrific) than others.  

Short fiction isn't really my go-to and I often prefer longer fiction works (300-500 pages is my comfort range).  However, I did have a goal this year of re-trying short fiction (novellas, short stories, etc) to see if I still don't prefer them.  I thought this would be a good place to start because since the stories are connected by the same town, I thought it would give me a bit more substance to grab hold of.  Also, these being novellas instead of short stories was also a bit of the wading into the sea of short fiction.  My main personal issue with short fiction is that, by the time I really find myself sinking into a story it ends.  I rarely find them a satisfying read and often times just leaves me with a sort of itch I can't scratch where I want more of the world or the characters but I literally can't have any more because it was only a short story.  Again, I thought that Goblin would help scratch that itch by way of the stories being somewhat connected and I was pleased that the book worked out exactly how I had hoped and I ended up really enjoying it.

I figured the best way to talk about this book would be each novella on their own and then the novel as a whole.  I also put in my ratings for each story which I don't normally do.  However, I think in this case it would be interesting to see how I felt about the different pieces of this novel as well as the novel overall and the easiest way would be with rating scores.

A Man in Slices: A man proves his "legendary love" to his girlfriend with a sacrifice even more daring than Vincent van Gogh's--and sends her more than his heart.

I liked how this story focused on just two people in the town - long time friends Richard and Charles.  This novella was told out of chronological order which I thought worked well to build up tension.  We're told at the beginning of the novella that Charles has confessed something horrible to Richard and Richard is considering going to the police.  We then bounce back and forth in time as we see the two meet in childhood and grow up together.  We get glimpses into their somewhat unconventional friendship and how other people around them react to it.  We get examples of Charles acting like a sociopath (although he's never diagnosed as such in the story) and how the two of them always reconnect when they're both in town.  I thought it was interesting to focus on such a specific relationship inside the town and just give little hints at some ways the town might be a little weird.  I also thought that having Charles and Richard be kids during the beginning helped build the atmosphere because as a reader, it isn't clear if the observations they're making are because they just have a child's imagination or if those observations are facts.  I really enjoyed the horror elements as well and I thought that they were the perfect balance of vague yet visceral for my personal tastes.  This, I found, to be the most straightforward gore story where as the others I found more psychological or at least the violence was done off the page in a sort of hand-wavy way.

5/5

Kamp: Walter Kamp is afraid of everything, but most afraid of being scared to death. As he sets traps around his home to catch the ghosts that haunt him, he learns that nothing is more terrifying than fear itself.

I really didn't enjoy this novella nearly as much as the first.  I wasn't drawn into Walter's world really at all and found his sort of steam of consciousness hard to follow.  I had to re-read multiple passages to figure out what was really going on.  I did like the way the town history was integrated into this story, but it felt very much like an infodump was needed and Malerman created the rest of the plot around that one need.   I did find the actual town history very interesting and I think it worked really well.  I almost would have preferred if the novella was maybe just the local historian writing a book about the town's history or something.  The horror elements and the historical elements felt really disjointed to me.  I think, since most of the time is spend in Walter's apartment, that for the story to work he needed the reader's sympathies and I just didn't have that connection with him.  

2/5

Happy Birthday, Hunter!: A famed big-game hunter is determined to capture--and kill--the ultimate prey: the mythic Great Owl who lives in Goblin's dark forests. But this mysterious creature is not the only secret the woods are keeping.

 This novella was really great and I think it did a lot of the same things Kamp was trying to do but it did them much more effectively.  In this story, we get more town history that builds on what we know from Kamp.  However, this history was framed around a character and situation that I found much more dynamic and interesting.  Neal Nash is turning 60 and his wife is throwing him the biggest birthday bash the town has ever seen.  Neal, however, is obsessed with the Great Owls who live in the forest outside town - the forests that people are forbidden from entering.  Neal is a trophy hunter and he has successfully hunted just about every type of game on the planet.  We get the history of these Owls and one of the founding members of the town through Neal's obsessions and this is the first novella where we actually see how the town itself is a bit twisted and magical.  I loved the way the decadent party contrasts with the brutality of hunting. We get a good amount of the party on page and see these adults and, in some cases, pretty important figures in the town devolve into absolute debauchery.  It was like a frat party gone bad which I thought was a really interesting contrast to how most 60th birthday parties end up.  I did find the ending to be a bit of a let down because it took away some of the agency from Neal which I didn't like.  The reader was basically rooting for him, for better or worse, to have a successful hunt and when we get to the ending it sort of feels like the events of the story suddenly mean less and Neal (and the reader) get the rug pulled out from under him a bit.

4/5

Presto: All Peter wants is to be like his hero, Roman Emperor, the greatest magician in the world. When the famous magician comes to Goblin, Peter discovers that not all magic is just an illusion.

For me, this novella spent a lot of time focused around a character that I didn't really care about.  We start off the novella at a magic show by Roman Emperor in a town nearby Goblin.  We find out that Goblin is the magician's next stop and then we switch to following Peter, a boy in Goblin who wants to be a magician like Roman.  Maybe if we would have started off with Peter and then flipped over to Roman I would feel differently, but I was a bit let down when we got to Peter.  I just don't find stories from kid POVs very engaging for some reason and the fact that we know something is off with Roman just made me want to skim over Peter's parts to get back to Roman.  We find out how Roman's magic works and I wanted so badly for the story to take a turn that maybe his magic works differently in Goblin because Goblin itself is so weird and magical.  I didn't find that Peter's POV added really anything (tension, perspective, etc) to the story for me.  Roman's POV, however, I was really interested and invested in and I wanted so much more of it. 

3/5

A Mix-Up at the Zoo: The new zookeeper feels a mysterious kinship with the animals in his care . . . and finds that his work is freeing dark forces inside him.

This novella, for me, was like a fever dream.  I couldn't quite get a handle on exactly what was happening but I think I liked it okay overall.  I liked the general premise of this beloved zookeeper who is slowly becoming unhinged.  I really liked the choice to make him fairly popular in the town which I think makes his fall from grace even more impactful.  I really liked the parts that were his dreams/hallucinations but I had a hard time when it was time for those dreams to integrate with reality.  I could see what Malerman was going for but the final execution of that effect didn't really work for me.  It ended up feeling a little bit too much like a disgruntled employee snapped one day rather than a slow descent which is what I feel like the story was going for.

3/5

The Hedges: When his wife dies, a man builds a hedge maze so elaborate no one ever solves it--until a little girl resolves to be the first to find the mysteries that wait at its heart.

 This novella is a heck of a strong way to finish this collection and I really enjoyed how it put some puzzle pieces together.  Throughout the previous 5 novellas, there were two aspects of Goblin that kept being mentioned but no one really went into any great detail - the hedges and the Goblin police.  We see these last two aspects of the town in this last story and I thought it was an interesting choice to leave them until the end.  I think this story does a good job at giving the reader one last look at the town as a whole and some of the more structural elements like the police.  I found this story the most emotionally impactful because the whole reason Wayne even built the hedge maze in the first place was in memory of his dead wife.  I also thought it was interesting how something that started out so personal could grow to become the town's main tourist attraction.  I thought this story did a good job at integrating the different elements of the town that we'd already seen (the Great Owls, the forest, the witch legend, etc) and gave the reader one last look at this weird town and the spooky forces inside it.  I also found it interesting that we get the Goblin police actually interacting with the characters on page because prior to this story, they were only mentioned by characters as something to stay away from.  Side note, the police are described as having sort of a weird rubbery appearance and, for whatever reason, I pictured them as those weird thumb monsters from the Spy Kids movie. I liked how little we knew about the police force - they felt almost alien compared to the other townspeople.  We don't get any background information on how they came to be the police like how we got background info on pretty much all of the other weird parts of town (Great Owls, for example).  In the end, I liked the dichotomy at the end of the fear of the unknown vs fear of the known that was played with a lot during this story and found it a really fitting and strong way to finish.

5/5

 

 Thoughts on the novel as a whole

The best way I've been able to describe the atmosphere and tone of this book is if the podcast/show Welcome to Night Vale took place in Stephen King's Derry Maine.  It is weird and fantastical and unsettling in the way that Night Vale is but has a really dark and, at times, brutal edge to the stories that reminded me of prime time Stephen King.

I really enjoyed the structure to these interconnected stories and liked how each new story had a little piece of the previous story for me to grab onto as I was exploring this new part of the town.  As I said above, I really like to be able to sink into a book and I think having the stories all be somewhat connected helped the book live up to the tagline "a novel in 6 novellas".  I did feel like we got a whole story by the end and while that story might not have the traditional structure of a single plot thread or the traditional beginning, middle, and end, I think it did tell the story of this town in Michigan.  

Outside of the six novellas, there is a prologue and epilogue that are two halves of the same story.   This story follows a delivery driver as he is tasked with very specific instructions to deliver a mysterious box to an address in Goblin.  When he arrives, the contents of the box aren't at all what he expected.  I think the prologue does a good job at very gently inviting the reader into this mysterious world.  It is clear that the events and rumors of Goblin have reached other towns so it almost lets the reader know that the upcoming events are true, no matter how outrageous they may seem.  It also set up the general atmosphere and horror elements as something spooky in the shadows that isn't exactly known except for the fact that something is off and that tone carries well throughout the rest of the book.  The epilogue was just a nice way to finish off that plot thread and leaves a real sense of openness to the ending that was interesting.  

I found the horror elements to be well done, but I didn't find them over the top at all.  I think each story had a different edge to the type of horror it employed, but the entire book had a feeling of dread cast over it where we knew that these stories most likely aren't going to end up all sunshine and roses.  I would describe the horror elements as uneasy feelings, unsettling, and light gore but individual mileage may vary.

For someone who doesn't really enjoy short fiction, I think these interconnected stories really help bridge the gap.  I did find that my overall enjoyment of each novella was pretty dependent on if I connected with the main character of that story.  I am more of a character driven reader as opposed to more plot driven so I think with such few pages to work with, if I don't connect with a character choice it has a bigger impact overall on my reading experience.  If I take my average rating of the individual novellas, I get a 3.6/5.  However, I think the overall cohesiveness and world building of this novel in six novellas was really well done and deserves a 4/5 final rating.

Overall, this was a really great collection of interconnected novellas that work both at an individual level as well as a whole.  I think the quieter horror elements work really well to help immerse the reader into this town in Michigan without asking them to suspend their disbelief too far. 

 

Thanks to NetGalley and Del Ray Books for the ARC in exchange for review.

Expected publication date: May 18, 2021

(original publication was November 1, 2017)