This horror novel is centered on Walter Kopple's farm and one particular pig named Pearl. The story starts with one of Walter's grandsons killing another pig on the farm and tells everyone he heard a voice telling him to kill the pig and that voice belongs to Pearl and that killing was just the first of many to come.
TW/CW: Animal death, animal abuse
This is the third Josh Malerman book I've read (others were A House at the Bottom of a Lake and Goblin - reviews linked for those) and while those were pretty creepy and a little spooky at times, I found Pearl to be pretty much straight-up horror. Malerman does not hold back - we get death and gore and terror right on the page. I can't speak for other readers, but I remember being shocked when I found out that pigs aren't the cute pink little herbivores that children's picture books make them out to be and this book really plays up that fact (other examples of pigs being used for murder/body disposal include Hannibal by Thomas Harris - as well as the 2001 movie by the same name - and season 4 episode 25 of Criminal Minds). I found the gore elements to be really visceral but not overly descriptive or drawn out so it didn't feel overdone or for pure shock value. There are also psychological and supernatural horror elements to the story which I really enjoyed although some of those elements are where I got a bit confused (and will be discussed later). There is also a really nice atmosphere of creeping dread during the lead up to the events where we see how unsettling Pearl has been to just about everyone who has ever met him. Malerman does an excellent job at showing the reader how each character is feeling about Pearl while Pearl just sits and stares at them. Pearl, initially, doesn't look like much of a threat but the reactions and feelings each person has around him are very telling and extremely well executed from a writing perspective. This is a book about a psychic/telekinetic pig who used his powers to exact revenge on the humans around him and it goes all in on that premise.
I really enjoyed the wide array of characters we followed throughout this story. I love Malerman's ability to just jump into a character and quickly catch the reader up on all the information we need to know about them. We are jumping around in between 9 (I think) different characters and while we spend more time with some characters than others, that's still a lot to juggle. I will say we don't get super deep with these characters, but we certainly get deep enough to understand their reactions to the events that unfold during the story. The majority of the story takes place over 1 day which some flashbacks as well as a little jump forward at the end so it makes sense that the reader is jumping all over the narrative to see what each of these characters are doing somewhat simultaneously. The narrative style felt very similar to when there's a big event that happens on the news and they rotate through to different reporters who each are covering one aspect of the event. I usually prefer to have one main POV character and then have the other characters be a little more secondary but in this case, I honestly don't know who I would pick to be my primary character.
The plot is, at its core, a revenge story and I was surprised at the amount of Pearl's backstory and development we got in the story. We don't really see it until the later parts of the story, so most of the time I was reading I sort of was just along for the ride and perfectly okay with not really knowing how or why Pearl developed these abilities. However, I did like the reveal of how Pearl came to be Pearl because we know how he ends up. The reader knows how the shit hits the fan so when we see the little steps that Pearl took along the way, it is really interesting how it all comes together. I also found it interesting how Pearl used his powers on his fellow animals and not just people which made the story more widely scary and makes the reader less likely to want Pearl to win. The story was giving me big Animal Farm X Carrie vibes and I do wish we got a bit more of Pearl's plans or his goals before it went completely off the rails.
Where the book lost me a bit was at about the 60% mark where we see a new side to Pearl's abilities that took me out of the story, in a way. The first half of the story we see how Pearl's abilities work in a certain way and then suddenly there's this big jump in scale that I didn't feel was well explained or really made a whole lot of sense, especially given the ending. It made Pearl's abilities feel a little too convenient for the plot (X character needs to do Y so now suddenly Pearl can do Z in order to make that happen). The ending is similarly bonkers and gives us a different side to Pearl's abilities. I re-read over the last 10% of the book a few times and still feel like something was going over my head so this might just be a me-issue and maybe not a problem for other readers. I think if we saw more of a ramping up of power for Pearl then maybe the new powers would have been easier for me to be on board with but we almost get the opposite where we see Pearl being tired and his powers being stretched thin across too many people so I just ended up a bit confused and my confusion messed with my immersion.
Overall, this was a fantastic horror read that really takes the premise and runs with it. I loved the characters, horror elements, and plot structure. I do think it goes a little too far at times and would have preferred the story to be a little more contained, but overall I think this will be a story that really sticks with me over time.
Thanks to NetGalley and Del Ray Books for the ARC in exchange for review
Expected publication date is October 12, 2021
(previously published in 2019 under the title On this, the Day of the Pig)
No comments:
Post a Comment