Do you ever get sick of it? You're reading a book in our beloved genre and you are introduced to a man, or a woman, or perhaps a family. The writer knows what he or she is doing and the characters are firmly established and you begin to actually give a damn about them. Their emotional plight, their wants, needs, desires. Then a monster shows up and you feel disappointed.
It's to be expected, certainly. Though few seem to have the integrity to actually label a book Horror these days, we know what we're getting into when we start one. But I grow weary of it sometimes. In many cases, the characters are more than enough to carry the story and there is no real need for supernatural interference. But the book is usually sold to the specific market and that's what the customer is paying for.
I in no way wish to abandon the genre. Not as a fan and not as a commentator. I do, however, want to broaden my horizons more. To not stay within the myopic confines of a horror story, or a science fiction yarn, or a noirish mystery/suspense piece.
So I was doing a Search at Amazon...looking for books on the history of the drive-in theater. In happened upon the title of a novel called The Starlight Drive-In, by a writer I had no previous knowledge of: Marjorie Reynolds. Since this site is a celebration of the drive-in theater, as well as being a home for (cough cough) literary reviews, I felt it appropriate that I get myself a copy of The Starlight Drive-In and attempt to read and review it.
Copies are dirt cheap and I got one through Amazon.com Marketplace for about a penny, plus shipping. It arrived in a timely fashion and I made sure that it was my next reading project. After all, I had been in the mood for something different; something mainstream.
Less than twenty-four hours after beginning The Starlight Drive-In, I'm finished reading it and I feel that I could not have found a more perfect novel for my current mood. This book is astonishingly good. I'm talking in the league of John Irving, although it doesn't have the gimmicky feel that many of Irving's works do. Or the excessive wordage. The Starlight Drive-In is lean and I don't think there is a wasted sentence in the entire novel. Marjorie Reynolds presents the reader with firmly, yet quickly developed characters and a wonderfully nostalgic time and setting that any reader should love.
In the hands of a lesser writer, the plot of The Starlight Drive-In could be tawdry, melodramatic. Soap Opera stuff. During a stiflingly hot Summer in rural 1956 Indiana, a young girl and her family's lives are turned upside down by the arrival of a drifter that has been hired to do odd jobs at the drive-in theater that the father manages. The mother suffers from agoraphobia and has not left the house in an embarrassing number of years. The father is bitter and resentful that he is stuck in a dead end job, in a dead end community, with her. Repressed passions are inflamed when the charming drifter bedazzles both the mother and the daughter, the latter of which is the narrator of the novel. The reader knows from the initial chapter that a skeleton was unearthed at the drive-in site decades later. As the story progresses, I was wondering whose bones they would turn out to be. The drifter, murdered by the jealous husband? The abusive father? Or perhaps the mentally addled man that skulks around the theater, desperate for scraps of food and the attentions of the mother.
To Marjorie Reynolds credit, none of the characters are clear-cut good or bad. Each of them transgresses from society's taboos of proper behavior. Yet none are entirely bad individuals either. In short, they are a lot like everyday people. Not really good or bad, but average, flawed human beings.
As the novel progresses, passion, anger and dread build to a fever pitch and the reader is well aware that violence and vicious hatred will erupt before the brutal summer ends and the drive-in closes for the winter.
Much of the Starlight Drive-In takes place at the theater during business hours and the omnipresent, enormous screen presides over it all, with Godlike majesty. The repressed daughter, Callie Anne, has based her notions of love and life from the towering movies, yet she learns the hard way that in real life, things are never neat and uncomplicated.
The Starlight Drive-In reads a bit like a Young Adult story and its central theme is one that never grows stale (at least in the right creative hands). Callie Anne's youthful innocence is lost in that blistering summer and she can never return to its comforts.
With complete sincerity, I cannot remember the last novel that moved me so deeply as The Starlight Drive-In. It's a stunning debut from an enormously talented writer and it puts the majority of the genre books I attempt to read to shame. This is the kind of book that is the very best to read. One that makes me examine my own life and wish to change it. It's criminal that I had never even heard of Marjorie Reynolds and I bet that you haven't either. I already have her second book on order, which is called The Civil Wars of Jonah Moran. It deals with a man who is afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome, just as one of my daughters is. Drive-in theaters? Asperger's Syndrome? It would seem that Marjorie Reynolds and I are psychically linked.
It's to be expected, certainly. Though few seem to have the integrity to actually label a book Horror these days, we know what we're getting into when we start one. But I grow weary of it sometimes. In many cases, the characters are more than enough to carry the story and there is no real need for supernatural interference. But the book is usually sold to the specific market and that's what the customer is paying for.
I in no way wish to abandon the genre. Not as a fan and not as a commentator. I do, however, want to broaden my horizons more. To not stay within the myopic confines of a horror story, or a science fiction yarn, or a noirish mystery/suspense piece.
So I was doing a Search at Amazon...looking for books on the history of the drive-in theater. In happened upon the title of a novel called The Starlight Drive-In, by a writer I had no previous knowledge of: Marjorie Reynolds. Since this site is a celebration of the drive-in theater, as well as being a home for (cough cough) literary reviews, I felt it appropriate that I get myself a copy of The Starlight Drive-In and attempt to read and review it.
Copies are dirt cheap and I got one through Amazon.com Marketplace for about a penny, plus shipping. It arrived in a timely fashion and I made sure that it was my next reading project. After all, I had been in the mood for something different; something mainstream.
Less than twenty-four hours after beginning The Starlight Drive-In, I'm finished reading it and I feel that I could not have found a more perfect novel for my current mood. This book is astonishingly good. I'm talking in the league of John Irving, although it doesn't have the gimmicky feel that many of Irving's works do. Or the excessive wordage. The Starlight Drive-In is lean and I don't think there is a wasted sentence in the entire novel. Marjorie Reynolds presents the reader with firmly, yet quickly developed characters and a wonderfully nostalgic time and setting that any reader should love.
In the hands of a lesser writer, the plot of The Starlight Drive-In could be tawdry, melodramatic. Soap Opera stuff. During a stiflingly hot Summer in rural 1956 Indiana, a young girl and her family's lives are turned upside down by the arrival of a drifter that has been hired to do odd jobs at the drive-in theater that the father manages. The mother suffers from agoraphobia and has not left the house in an embarrassing number of years. The father is bitter and resentful that he is stuck in a dead end job, in a dead end community, with her. Repressed passions are inflamed when the charming drifter bedazzles both the mother and the daughter, the latter of which is the narrator of the novel. The reader knows from the initial chapter that a skeleton was unearthed at the drive-in site decades later. As the story progresses, I was wondering whose bones they would turn out to be. The drifter, murdered by the jealous husband? The abusive father? Or perhaps the mentally addled man that skulks around the theater, desperate for scraps of food and the attentions of the mother.
To Marjorie Reynolds credit, none of the characters are clear-cut good or bad. Each of them transgresses from society's taboos of proper behavior. Yet none are entirely bad individuals either. In short, they are a lot like everyday people. Not really good or bad, but average, flawed human beings.
As the novel progresses, passion, anger and dread build to a fever pitch and the reader is well aware that violence and vicious hatred will erupt before the brutal summer ends and the drive-in closes for the winter.
Much of the Starlight Drive-In takes place at the theater during business hours and the omnipresent, enormous screen presides over it all, with Godlike majesty. The repressed daughter, Callie Anne, has based her notions of love and life from the towering movies, yet she learns the hard way that in real life, things are never neat and uncomplicated.
The Starlight Drive-In reads a bit like a Young Adult story and its central theme is one that never grows stale (at least in the right creative hands). Callie Anne's youthful innocence is lost in that blistering summer and she can never return to its comforts.
With complete sincerity, I cannot remember the last novel that moved me so deeply as The Starlight Drive-In. It's a stunning debut from an enormously talented writer and it puts the majority of the genre books I attempt to read to shame. This is the kind of book that is the very best to read. One that makes me examine my own life and wish to change it. It's criminal that I had never even heard of Marjorie Reynolds and I bet that you haven't either. I already have her second book on order, which is called The Civil Wars of Jonah Moran. It deals with a man who is afflicted with Asperger's Syndrome, just as one of my daughters is. Drive-in theaters? Asperger's Syndrome? It would seem that Marjorie Reynolds and I are psychically linked.
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