Jack Ketchum The Box Pdf
Publisher: Us Imports Paperback (336pp) Sometimes a book is so perfectly put together that, upon finishing, it benefits from a re-read. Such is the case with The Woman, a tale of exquisite sorrow. Having read the climax you will be sorely tempted to skip back to page one and appreciate the cyclical nature of this depraved tragedy. For longstanding fans of Jack Ketchum, it will come as no surprise that this book contains some of the most disturbing and graphic depictions of terror to grace fiction. Whilst The Girl Next Door managed to create suspense from start to finish with that ominous line early on – “nothing in my life has been right since the summer of 1958, when Ruth and Donny and Willie and all the rest of us met Meg Loughlin” – other Ketchum novels, by their nature, possess implied suspense. With Ketchum, events will take an invariable downward plunge.
PDF Download The Girl Next Door, by Jack Ketchum You could finely add the soft file The Girl Next Door, By Jack Ketchum to the device or every computer hardware in your workplace or residence. It will aid you to still continue reviewing The Girl Next Door, By Jack Ketchum each time you have spare time. Jack Ketchum is the pseudonym for a former actor, singer, teacher, literary agent, lumber salesman, and soda jerk. He is also a former flower child and baby boomer who figures that in 1956 Elvis, dinosaurs, and horror probably saved his life.
Off Season illustrates this point when, one hundred pages in, naked lovers are violently snatched by a horde of cannibals in a tome that is so daringly horrific it makes the video nasty equivalents look positively sterile. Having cemented his reputation as one of the modern day masters of horror and suspense, Jack has a lot to live up to. His collaborative outing, with Lucky McKee, does not disappoint. Jack has long been a master of succinct, powerful language. When Strunk famously said, “a sentence should contain no unnecessary words” Jack listened. It’s his use of blunt, simple language that resonates and affects the reader.
Whilst Jack’s work is unquestionably gory, it is minimalist and always packs a philosophical message underneath the reams of innards and blood. Think of it, if you like, as fiction’s equivalent to Martyrs. The Woman is the sequel to Offspring but works just as well as a standalone novel. It is a cross between the underrated 5150 Elm’s Way, I Spit On Your Grave and the aforementioned Martyrs.
Dallas Mayr
The cinematic comparisons are wholly appropriate, not only was The Woman recently made into an award-winning film, but as a novel it is highly visual. As has become characteristic with Jack’s work, characters are introduced in the first fifty pages before anything disturbing and too out of the ordinary occurs. There are hints towards a darker past but it is not implicit until, well, you’ll see The Woman focuses on the Cleek family and the sole surviving member of a native tribe, The Woman. The Cleek family comprise of successful lawyer and mentally unstable chauvinist Chris, far too loyal and unquestioning wife Belle, teenage son Brian – who has a toolbox of social problems – troubled teenager Peg who can see through, and has witnessed, her Father’s dark side and the, as yet, untainted four-year-old Darleen. There’s also an extra addition to the family that is revealed deep into the story.
The Cleeks and The Woman collide when increasingly erratic Chris Cleek captures The Woman and attempts to rehabilitate her back into human society. Unfortunately his unorthodox methods are detrimental to her well-being and the novel soon evolves into a fight for her survival. The irony that the Cleeks have become the more uncivilised and crazed party is not lost on Jack or Lucky who carefully juxtapose the Cleek family meltdown with the increasing human elements and empathy of the untamed woman. Even at face value The Woman is much more than torture porn for a desensitised generation of yuppies looking for a quick fix. Whilst there are similarities and parallels between The Woman and The Girl Next Door, this is distinct enough to stand its ground as another essential Ketchum novel.
It is an interesting exploration of the human psyche, our own endurance levels and confronts the question of what it is to be human. The most terrifying element of The Woman is its realism. Lucky and Jack do not deal in the fantastical or suspension of disbelief. The Woman is every bit as real as us and exposes the cruelty and perversity of mankind with all the subtlety of a pair of scissors clean-cutting a clitoris (remember Antichrist?). Try and domesticate those fortunate enough to be feral if you will, but if The Woman is anything to go by then we’re better left alone, untainted. MICHAEL WILSON.
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Be warned: some spoilers and graphic description ahead. I was first introduced to Ketchum through a random horror novel my mom gave me for Christmas a few years back entitled 'The Lost'. For Ketchum fans who've read this book you may have differing opinions on it, but for me it was simply spectacular. A page turner from the get go with such real emotion, characters and situations that it began to feel real. It was a totally new reading experience. For the next few years I would always bring up 'The Lost' in conversations about favorite horror novels or favorite novels in general but it was not until this year that I finally took the dive into Ketchum's other works.
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This decision was in large part due to my love for 'The Lost' and also due to Stephen King's outspoken appreciation of Ketchum. I chose to start with his breakout piece, 'Off Season'. I ordered the completely uncensored and unedited 2006 print with all parts originally deemed too violent left in tact. After three days I completed the novel but not solely because it was an amazing read (although it was) but because of the utter sense of doom, dread and fear it instilled in me. How could I ever sleep without knowing the ending?
To give a bit of context about myself, I often read horror novels from Stephen King and Dean Koontz. Yes, their novels often are creepy and I love them all, but never have their books ever truly terrified me (at least not until adapted into a film). This is where Jack Ketchum and 'Off Season' separate from the bunch.
A bit of plot context: 'Off Season' is the tale of a woman who is renting a house for a summer to work on her writing. Naturally she has some friends and family visit only to have a family of inbred cannibals who live in a cave descend upon them, capture them, and ultimately torture them to death. For fans of horror films this all seems rather basic at face value but somehow it becomes far more intense and complicated as the story gets more and more simple. Reading the last 100 pages was the most terrifying and heart pounding moments I've ever experienced while reading. After I struggled to sleep and today, all day, images of the final tortures have invaded my thoughts and flashed through my brain. I can't stop thinking about it. This is where Ketchum really excels.
He induces not fear but actual terror in its most primitive form in a reader who is only imagining what is happening, not even seeing it. As he describes a woman being dismembered systematically, her tongue being ripped from her mouth, the sounds of her arms as they are cut from her body all while being kept alive so she may experience it first hand, I could feel my heart sink and the novel ceased to become merely book any longer. It became a reality. I could smell it, taste it and see it and it was awful. And yet, somehow, this all made the book amazingly wonderful! How can something so vile and so horrible be great? It actually put me in the story.
I felt it all, I experienced it! I didn't read it, I lived it! Never, let me repeat, NEVER have I ever been so engrossed, involved and terrified of a book before and because of that it has become the best horror novel and perhaps the best novel I've ever read. If you have an interest in reading this book then be warned: this is not a book for the faint of heart. It is a whirlwind of gore, rape and torture and the inescapable hand of death. It doesn't tell us, but illustrated to us that nobody is safe, we are all just tiny ants who are lucky to be alive every day.
I was horrified and gladly surprised by this novel and even almsot vomited twice! So do I recommend this novel?
Jack Ketchum The Box Pdf Download
It's hard to say. On the one hand I want to say 'do it! It's the most amazing horror book ever!' But on the other hand I want to scream 'no!
Do not read this! It will fuck you up!' I'm the end only you can decide and perhaps some fellow readers here may be able to add to this conversation and discuss some more their likes and dislikes of the book as well as their own personal opinions and experiences! Oh, I remember reading that book a couple years ago. I definitely agree with your warning, and while I think the book really does make you afraid. It was just kind of over the top for me.
It felt a little like it was just violent for the shock value. I think, ultimately, this was one of the books that turned me off horror-thrillers. Not that I don't appreciate the occasional rape and/or torture scene in a book, it just seems like the genre is over-saturated with them. Some might argue that this is the whole point of it, but it just doesn't really feel creative after a while and I got bored of it. This book definitely is a great example of the genre, it's just what pushed me over the edge, so to speak. It's important, I feel, to look at the context of when in time this book was made.
For example 'Halloween', what is considered to be the beginning of the 1980's slasher flick that we knew, was made only 3 years prior to this book in 1978. The original 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre' only came out in 1974. Watching these films you realize that their tone of gore and violence is there but so toned down compared to what we see today on movies like 'SAW' or the 'Hills Have Eyes' (which ironically had its first incarnation released in 1977). When you watch these movies and realize how not violent they are compared to films today and their remakes, and also bearing in mind that films like these often faced heavy scrutiny, I think there is a new appreciation for what Ketchum did here. He really created something terrifying and raw, more raw than movies, and that's hard to do in a novel.