Rating: 
Summary: Slow Reading; Insulting to Women
Review: This book was quite boring. While the first chapter promises excitement, the plot unravels before your eyes as you plod through this book. Additionally, the main character and narrator of the story is an ignorant fool who is surrounded by people who do not care for her. Her mother rejects her and her husband won't pay attention to her unless some spirit is attacking her. While I felt sorry for her at times, at others, I wanted to yell at her to wake up and get out of that strange town that felt like it was stuck in a time warp.In conclusion, don't bother with this drivel.
Rating: 
Summary: A Brilliant Novel-- Not a Mere Ghost Story
Review: This is a brilliant novel, which should not be pigeonholed in the "horror" genre or compared to anything by Stephen King. Ann Arensberg has written a perfect novel for 1999. For she writes, "there is a clandestine traffic from the underworld in every era, but particularly at the end of a millenium... The inhabitants of the underworld smell our panic..." This is a powerful, haunting, sexy book with plenty of commentary on religion and friendship and family life. And it is driven by a gripping plot about the supernatural invasion of a small town in Maine in 1974. Like Isabel Walker, the narrator of Diane Johnson's stunning novel "Le Divorce," Arensberg's narrator, Cora Whitman, is a lot more astute and knowing than she would have us believe. She is a cook, a gardener, and the wife of a minister-- all occupations that soothe us as she leads us into this macabre and disturbing tale of the supernatural. This is one of those rare books that signal to you that you are in the hands of a master writer. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: Mulder and Scully In Monster-Haunted Maine
Review: This is the best low-key, adult supernatural horror story since Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and is told in very much the same style. The horrors it paints are initially presented in suspensefully suggestive backdrop, mounting gradually to a graphic and dramatic conclusion. Narrator Cora Whitman is a pastor's wife in rural Dry Falls, Maine, which in 1974 suffers from a non-stop blighting heat-wave. It also suffers from something more sinister: an invisible menace that sexually molests sleeping women and maturing girls. Cora is far more reluctant than her falteringly religious husband, and his paranormal-researching circle of friends, to accept that the reported nocturnal assaults are the work of some supernatural agent - until she becomes its target, herself. Cora begins her story with Charles Fort's most famous quote - "I think we're property" - and an enumeration of paranormal events in our time and before our time, before walking us through her own voyage from skepticism to belief. Her perspective enables the reader to witness events that could be nothing more than overactive imaginations or sexual frustration (all the women in Dry Falls are suffering from an epidemic lack of sexual interest from their husbands), but gradually become more indicative of supernatural intrusion: one woman feels as if a masculine presence was in her room, but sees nothing; another senses a vague shadowy outline in the door, while suffering apparent sleep-paralysis; a third has chunks of flesh gouged out of her scalp, by nails sharper than she possesses, and is certain an unseen male figure was in her room. Even after several girls from the nearby prep-school are found, in the same room and on the same night, sleeping as if drugged and sexually hyper-excreting while seeming to respond to bedpartners, Cora and the Dry Falls townsfolk manufacture rationalizations to account for the phenomenon. Eventually, however, too many people witness events beyond any natural explanation, and Dry Falls becomes a town besieged by fear. What makes this novel work is the understated, first-person approach. Daily events are described in mundane fashion, with the odd occurrence here and there sandwiched in, mulled over for a moment, and then forgotten - until the next. By the time Cora is convinced that outside entities have targeted Dry Falls, so is the reader. She and her husband come off very much as a Scully and Mulder pair, the story itself feeling a great deal like a well-written episode of The X-Files. In fact, the presentation of paranormal researchers and their techniques is spot-on accurate, and completely believable for it. The tone and style have almost a documentary feel, and the illusion of reality is exceptionally well sustained. The Reader's Guide/author's interview at the end of the book reveals that Arensberg was consciously drawing from lore of historical fairy abductions, demon hauntings, and contemporary reports of UFO entities in crafting her tale, and she presents them extremely realistically. Literarily, she sought to emulate Nathaniel Hawthorne and Shirley Jackson, and she succeeds fabulously. This is thinking-man's horror, for mature readers only.
Rating:
Summary: Mulder and Scully In Monster-Haunted Maine
Review: This is the best low-key, adult supernatural horror story since Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and is told in very much the same style. The horrors it paints are initially presented in suspensefully suggestive backdrop, mounting gradually to a graphic and dramatic conclusion. Narrator Cora Whitman is a pastor's wife in rural Dry Falls, Maine, which in 1974 suffers from a non-stop blighting heat-wave. It also suffers from something more sinister: an invisible menace that sexually molests sleeping women and maturing girls. Cora is far more reluctant than her falteringly religious husband, and his paranormal-researching circle of friends, to accept that the reported nocturnal assaults are the work of some supernatural agent - until she becomes its target, herself. Cora begins her story with Charles Fort's most famous quote - "I think we're property" - and an enumeration of paranormal events in our time and before our time, before walking us through her own voyage from skepticism to belief. Her perspective enables the reader to witness events that could be nothing more than overactive imaginations or sexual frustration (all the women in Dry Falls are suffering from an epidemic lack of sexual interest from their husbands), but gradually become more indicative of supernatural intrusion: one woman feels as if a masculine presence was in her room, but sees nothing; another senses a vague shadowy outline in the door, while suffering apparent sleep-paralysis; a third has chunks of flesh gouged out of her scalp, by nails sharper than she possesses, and is certain an unseen male figure was in her room. Even after several girls from the nearby prep-school are found, in the same room and on the same night, sleeping as if drugged and sexually hyper-excreting while seeming to respond to bedpartners, Cora and the Dry Falls townsfolk manufacture rationalizations to account for the phenomenon. Eventually, however, too many people witness events beyond any natural explanation, and Dry Falls becomes a town besieged by fear. What makes this novel work is the understated, first-person approach. Daily events are described in mundane fashion, with the odd occurrence here and there sandwiched in, mulled over for a moment, and then forgotten - until the next. By the time Cora is convinced that outside entities have targeted Dry Falls, so is the reader. She and her husband come off very much as a Scully and Mulder pair, the story itself feeling a great deal like a well-written episode of The X-Files. In fact, the presentation of paranormal researchers and their techniques is spot-on accurate, and completely believable for it. The tone and style have almost a documentary feel, and the illusion of reality is exceptionally well sustained. The Reader's Guide/author's interview at the end of the book reveals that Arensberg was consciously drawing from lore of historical fairy abductions, demon hauntings, and contemporary reports of UFO entities in crafting her tale, and she presents them extremely realistically. Literarily, she sought to emulate Nathaniel Hawthorne and Shirley Jackson, and she succeeds fabulously. This is thinking-man's horror, for mature readers only.
Rating: 
Summary: The problem of trying to have it both ways
Review: This novel feels like an attempt to combine a modern psychological portrait of a moderately dysfunctional small American town with an old-fashioned story of the supernatural. I was attracted to it because of the supernatural angle, but the author does a much better job with the more naturalistic details. There are strange happenings in a small Maine town one summer, and what the book does well for most of its length is build up a nicely ambigious view on these occurrences: are there "ghosts" haunting the women of this town, or is sexual and social malaise affecting everyone? The narrator is a skeptic who grows to want to believe, and the trouble comes at the climax, which is presented as wholly supernatural. The Reader's Guide at the end brings up the idea of the unreliable narrator, but if that is supposed to be a possible "solution" to the book's central predicament, it's prepared for very poorly. In fact, given the careful writing earlier, the climactic chapters are almost laughable in their "Exorcist"-like tone. The language throughout is lovely, but the plot ultimately disappoints.
Rating: 
Summary: Don't call me horror!
Review: To catagorize this book in the horror genre would be misleading and disappointing. Even though something horrible does happen to the women of Dry Falls, fans of classic pop horror authors such as King, Koontz, Barker and Rice might not find the book "meaty" enough. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed this book (even though I myself am a horror fan) and found it a refreshing read since it is rather short. The dialogue is clipped but this may be due to the New England dialect, and by extension, the New England culture portayed in the book. There are very good descriptions of the psychological make-up of the main characters and I found the relationship between the main character's mother and sister thoughtful and compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Don't call me horror!
Review: To catagorize this book in the horror genre would be misleading and disappointing. Even though something horrible does happen to the women of Dry Falls, fans of classic pop horror authors such as King, Koontz, Barker and Rice might not find the book "meaty" enough. Personally, I thoroughly enjoyed this book (even though I myself am a horror fan) and found it a refreshing read since it is rather short. The dialogue is clipped but this may be due to the New England dialect, and by extension, the New England culture portayed in the book. There are very good descriptions of the psychological make-up of the main characters and I found the relationship between the main character's mother and sister thoughtful and compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Post-Modern Battle Between Good and Evil
Review: Whatever the larger story, allegorical or not, that Ann Arensberg weaves within the more than competent text of her horror novel "Incubus", her lack of sustaining the suspense and her inability to create an empathic connection with any of the ravaged women in her Hawthornian-cloned New England town, renders that second literary dimension where "message" and "symbolism" may be concealed, too obscure and tedious to determine.
Is "Incubus" on a literary level, a retelling in reverse of one of Hawthorne's dark contemplative tales pitting good against evil? Is it like "Young Goodman Brown", the short story of a psychological journey where middle-aged faithless Cora, wife of an Episcopalian minister has been so inured by the late 20/21st century fascination in all things New Age mystical that her innate skepticism turns her towards finding an explanation for the odd occurrences in Dry Falls, Maine in the realm of aliens and UFOS rather than in believing in an actual manifestation of good old fashioned evil of the-tempting-by-Satan brand? Christianity and its traditions are not strong enough or viable enough to conquer the oddball extra-terrestrial imaginings that it does not define; its function is to save the soul. But what if you don't have a soul to save? What good is Christianity then?
What a great concept for a story. If only it had worked on a purely suspenseful level. But, alas, I must submit to the bewilderment conjurred by Arensberg's mundane style that works when describing gardening hints, recipe advise and disdain over husband Henry's lack of interest in the more intimate realms of married life. Does she employ this same straight-forward technique when describing her coupling with the incubus of the title simply because she wants to appear 21st century jaded, immune to the truely horrific after a steady diet of the likes of Hannabal Lector and Freddy Kruger in all their graphic gory splendor? Perhaps. Or maybe she is just giving a respectful nod to old Nathaniel, imitating his 19th century style.
And how this would have worked, if only the story had taken on big black leathery bat wings and soared into that part of the psyche that shakes weak traditions and the most steadfast of religious foundations. "Incubus" just doesn't go there---and I am not talking about Stephen King territory; throughout my reading of this novel I felt the need to beg for some episode which actually left my skin in a goosebump state on a purely mind game level. All of Arensberg's clever little Hawthorne reversals travel within a medium which doesn't have the clout to deliver any impact. We, the readers, wallow in our own jadedness, we wait for something to happen, some momentous moment where it will all click and allow some back-pedaling insight to wash over the montony of the story. This never happens. Alas.
Rating:
Summary: Post-Modern Battle Between Good and Evil
Review: Whatever the larger story, allegorical or not, that Ann Arensberg weaves within the more than competent text of her horror novel "Incubus", her lack of sustaining the suspense and her inability to create an empathic connection with any of the ravaged women in her Hawthornian-cloned New England town, renders that second literary dimension where "message" and "symbolism" may be concealed, too obscure and tedious to determine.
Is "Incubus" on a literary level, a retelling in reverse of one of Hawthorne's dark contemplative tales pitting good against evil? Is it like "Young Goodman Brown", the short story of a psychological journey where middle-aged faithless Cora, wife of an Episcopalian minister has been so inured by the late 20/21st century fascination in all things New Age mystical that her innate skepticism turns her towards finding an explanation for the odd occurrences in Dry Falls, Maine in the realm of aliens and UFOS rather than in believing in an actual manifestation of good old fashioned evil of the-tempting-by-Satan brand? Christianity and its traditions are not strong enough or viable enough to conquer the oddball extra-terrestrial imaginings that it does not define; its function is to save the soul. But what if you don't have a soul to save? What good is Christianity then?
What a great concept for a story. If only it had worked on a purely suspenseful level. But, alas, I must submit to the bewilderment conjurred by Arensberg's mundane style that works when describing gardening hints, recipe advise and disdain over husband Henry's lack of interest in the more intimate realms of married life. Does she employ this same straight-forward technique when describing her coupling with the incubus of the title simply because she wants to appear 21st century jaded, immune to the truely horrific after a steady diet of the likes of Hannabal Lector and Freddy Kruger in all their graphic gory splendor? Perhaps. Or maybe she is just giving a respectful nod to old Nathaniel, imitating his 19th century style.
And how this would have worked, if only the story had taken on big black leathery bat wings and soared into that part of the psyche that shakes weak traditions and the most steadfast of religious foundations. "Incubus" just doesn't go there---and I am not talking about Stephen King territory; throughout my reading of this novel I felt the need to beg for some episode which actually left my skin in a goosebump state on a purely mind game level. All of Arensberg's clever little Hawthorne reversals travel within a medium which doesn't have the clout to deliver any impact. We, the readers, wallow in our own jadedness, we wait for something to happen, some momentous moment where it will all click and allow some back-pedaling insight to wash over the montony of the story. This never happens. Alas.
Rating:
Summary: A True Waste of Time and Money
Review: Zero stars would be more like it. This was probably the worst book I've ever read. It was incredibly booooooooring. When I finally finished it, I threw it across the room. I'm a big reader and I've read some bad books but I don't usually throw them. I kept thinking it would get better but it never did. What really irked me was on the jacket it was compared with a Steven King novel. Sorry, no dice. I know that King is not exactly great literature but at least his books can hold my interest. I didn't like any of the characters. Don't waste your money or your time on this one. If you do, don't say you weren't warned.
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