Description:
You can trust Cora Whitman. She's a minister's wife, gardener, food writer, and just the kind of narrator that you don't find in most horror novels. She is practical, skeptical, and her matter-of-fact telling of the events that took place in Dry Falls, Maine, makes this incredible story easy to believe. Incubus begins with Cora Whitman's preface to the "case study" that is the novel. It's an almost scientific warm-up for the paranormal roller coaster that lies ahead. Arensberg's Dry Falls is a typical, small New England community, except during the summer of 1974 when the weather got unusually hot, the rain refused to fall, and the town was gripped by a sinister sexual spirit. The first signs of the incubus were relatively innocent--the town eccentric lost a few hours of her day, husbands became uncharacteristically ardent, schoolgirls saw a "ghost" in a graveyard.As the story progresses, the incubus grows more sinister, until it stirs up a supernatural hurricane with Cora Whitman trapped in its eye. Arensberg, whose other works include Group Sex and Sister Wolf, has created a sophisticated work of literary horror with Incubus. She raises many questions about religion, marriage, and the supernatural, and handles the subject matter with unflinching objectivity. Her prose is simultaneously elegant and pointed, and her characters both unusual and familiar, making the story irresistible. --Mara Friedman
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