The Girl Next Door

Rating:
Summary: The single, most horrifying novel I have ever read...
Review: I had heard dark rumors for years about this guy Jack Ketchum (mostly due to his infamous OFF SEASON) but could never find any of his books. For a writer this good, his stuff is amazingly difficult to come by. Well, all I can say is if you haven't read any Jack Ketchum, get thee to the book search page and order something...ANYTHING... by this guy! His fiction is more alive and immediate than just about any other author I can think of off hand. Forget about the fact that he's lumped into the "horror" genre (not that's there's neccesarily anything wrong with that :)) -- this is just good writing. Period.

Now, about THE GIRL NEXT DOOR: Jesus H. Christ! That's all I could say after finally finishing this book in one marathon 4-hour session. This book is tough. Uncompromising. Brutal. And believe me, whatever ideas you may get based on this review or any of the others...they're WRONG. You may think you're prepared for this book after hearing us tell you about it but you're not.

Trust me. You're not.

Not remotely.

The only other thing I can think of to say is that I have rarely experienced a piece of fiction that is this horrifying and yet this honest, this psychologically and emotionally true. And that is about the highest praise I can imagine.

Read it. Now.

Rating:
Summary: A Grinding Morality Play
Review: "The Girl Next Door" is probably Jack Ketchum's most sought after book. I scrambled to pick up a copy when it briefly appeared back in print because buying a used copy requires a second mortgage on the house, signing an agreement to turn over your first born son, and swearing to never resell your copy for less than Bolivia's gross national product. When I finally clutched a fresh new copy in my grimy hands, I was struck with a sudden shudder of fear: is this book worth all the heartache of acquiring a copy? Is it as gruesome as everyone says it is? No, the book is not worth shelling out an insane amount of money for a used copy, but it is an unsettling, gruesome, and soul shattering read.

Jack Ketchum has a tendency to fictionalize real life crime stories. He accomplished this in "Off Season," "Joyride," and here in "The Girl Next Door." In 1960's Indiana, Sylvia Likens and her little sister moved in with Gertrude Baniszewski while their parents went out of town. Baniszewski, her children, and several neighborhood children tortured and eventually murdered Likens over a period of months. At the trial, the children involved in the crime got off with an insignificant punishment, leading to outbursts of rage among the community and anyone with an ounce of moral fiber. In what must surely rank as one of our justice system's lowest moments, Gertrude herself was eventually released from prison, dying peacefully several years later somewhere in Iowa. This case serves as the loose outline for Ketchum's diabolical novel.

Set in the seemingly bucolic era of 1950's America, "The Girl Next Door" starts in the present day with our narrator, David, setting the stage for a flashback to that peaceful time in American history when Ike was in the White House, McCarthy chased Commies out of the State Department, and the biggest fear for most people was the realization that the USSR had the bomb. For David, there is a worse fear from that time, something buried deep in his heart and in his mind that needs telling before it drives him over the brink of sanity. David's childhood was marred by a horrific event, made even more horrific by the fact that he stood by and watched it happen without doing anything to stop the nightmare.

When David was a child, he lived next door to Ruth and her three sons. Everyone in the neighborhood loved to hang out at Ruth's house, even though the father of the children no longer lived there. Ruth allowed the boys who came over to drink some beer, watch TV, and generally goof off. Ruth treated the kids like adults, which impressed David to no end because his own parents do not get along whatsoever. Going to Ruth's is a great way to blow off some steam if you can put up with Ruth's occasional tirades about her worthless ex-husband.

This is Ketchum, so the story gradually moves into realms of unspeakable evil. The trouble starts when Meg Loughlin and her crippled sister Sarah move in with Ruth. Meg and Sarah's parents died in a car accident, and Ruth is the only family they have left. Life is fine at first, but David realizes gradually that Meg is having big problems with Ruth. Ruth gets nasty with Meg, meting out harsh punishments for innocuous behavior. Then Meg and Sarah begin to suffer verbal assaults from Ruth, often times in front of David and other boys in the neighborhood. Ruth's rants begin to take on an insanity and incoherency that frightens David. Ultimately, Meg ends up locked in a bomb shelter in the basement, where the real pain begins. All of the kids in the area participate in the torture and debasement of Meg, overseen by Ruth. The final indignity committed against Ruth is so horrible I refuse to refer to it here.

The violence in the book is horrible and stomach churning, but the cruelty takes a back seat to the moral lessons Ketchum is trying to convey. While reading this book, Hannah Arendt's phrase "the banality of evil" repeatedly came to mind. These people are not monsters springing out of closets or hostile aliens invading the earth. Ruth and the children involved are everyday people caught up in an unexplainable web of heartless and devastating malevolence. Even David is caught up in the unfolding events, although he does not take part in the actual deeds. It is safe to argue that David's role is worse than those who commit the crimes because he knows it is wrong and does nothing to stop them until it is too late. "The Girl Next Door" is not a horror novel per se; it is a morality play. Ketchum draws us into this warped world and forces us to condemn David while at the same time recognizing that we very well might do the same thing if it was us in his shoes.

You will not soon forget this grim and unsettling novel. Ketchum penetrates depths here that he rarely plumbs in his other books. It is a darn shame "The Girl Next Door" is not available in a mass-market paperback edition. Many people want to read it, and an introduction by none other than Stephen King lends a stamp of credibility to the book. Look around for a copy, but think long and hard before shelling out large amounts of dough.

Rating:
Summary: Truly HORRIFYING
Review: I'm not going to go into the plot of this book - there are plenty of other reviews here that do that. Instead, I simply want to encourage anybody who is on the fence as to whether or not they should buy this book (as I was a week ago) to do so immediately. You will be horrified (truly horrified as opposed to simply frightened) and your faith in humanity may even be shaken... but you will not be disappointed.

Rating:
Summary: An absolutely brutal book
Review: The fact that "The Girl Next Door" is set against the supposed innocence of 1950s just intensifies the brutality of the story. In this supposedly idyllic time and in an "All-American" suburb there is this deep, dark undercurrent of insanity and violence that you don't expect to find there. But the narrative takes you beyond simple unease. It takes you into the mind of the boy who watches the awful abuse of the girl Meg until you become a voyeur to the violence as well. This was a hard book to read and I literally felt wrung out and dirty after reading it. Ketchum doesn't pull any punches in his writing, though you may find that you wish he had. So why did I give the book 5 stars, you may ask? The book is unforgettably powerful, evocative, and well-written, and I shuuder a little every time I look at it. Excellent horror realism.

Rating:
Summary: Ketchum's most disturbing work ever...
Review: Jack Ketchum, a very nice man judging from an interview I once read, again unleashes his darker side in what's arguably his most shocking book yet. Set in the Fifties, regarded by some as a bland or boring decade, this book chronicles the abuse, torture and murder of a luckless young girl left in the care of a depraved, sadistic family. (Anyone who eats hot dogs, beans AND saurkraut all in one meal HAS to be depraved!) The book is well-crafted, which somehow makes the events therein all the more disturbing; the atrocities are detailed with Ketchum's characteristic lack of restraint and not for the faint of heart. Ketchum's "dark side," however, is no worse than the dark events that inspired this novel. Over a period of four months in 1965, a teenager named Sylvia Likens was systematically abused and tortured to death by a family of low-lifes, and their friends, in Indianapolis. In terms of individual suffering this ranks as The Crime Of The Century, and there was no real payback as there was for the main villain in Ketchum's novel. God forbid that such a crime should happen next door to anybody, ever again.

Rating:
Summary: Overwhelmingly Brutal Realism *Should* Make You Squirm
Review: Ketchum's novel should make you squirm with discomfort, not because it is a horror book, but because it is horrifyingly closer to the real side of human brutality than to those fantastical drafted gore fests we sink our teeth into when our tongues require the taste of terror.

There is a novel by Luanne Rice called Stone Heart that crept into the hidden realm of Domestic Abuse without the benefit of rose colored glasses, and left me breathless in the wake of such an emotional journey.

"Girl Next Door" took me through that journey again, but this time the passage was darker and filled with unaccountable dread. "How could this happen?" you will say. "Why didn't anybody DO anything?" The tide of emotion you will feel sweeping over you, washing your pity in tears as salty as the ocean and swirling the intense sadness through your soul, will leave you touched by a profound sense of loss.

In the 1950's, life was simple for a group of neighborhood children, living in a close knit, out of the way community. David was a boy back then, when Meg and Susan Loughlin move in next door with Ruth Chandler and her three sons, after the death of their parents in a car accident that left Meg scarred and Susan crippled.

David doesn't mind playing with Ruth's boys, and often found Ruth to be quite pleasant, in that she would treat the boys as adults and even allow them beer at times. But Ruth had a legendary temper, well known throughout the neighborhood.

David is enchanted by Meg, and therefore hangs around more than ever next door, wanting to be near her. Ruth, unstable before, begins rushing down towards the pits of insanity at a noticeably accelerated pace; and makes the Loughlin girls targets for her anger-infused mania. Descending from verbal abuse, to overworking Meg at chores, to her final psychotic imprisonment of the two innocent girls, Ketchum's painting of Ruth in the colors of derangement and lunacy is vivid and realistically unsettling.

Ruth slowly begins to allow others to join her in terrorizing the girls, and though David is mortified at the scenes unfolding right in front of him, he does nothing and tells no one about Ruth's basement until it is too late. I will not divulge any further information, but with the story being told from David's viewpoint, you can feel and understand his hesitation and fear, and remember that he himself was still just a child.

In this book, you may find yourself wishing that Ketchum was less skilled in his writings, so that you wouldn't find yourself so drawn into the characters and the appalling scenario. This book will make you angry and sad, leave you feeling helpless in your inability to change the outcome, and that is exactly what you should be feeling. You will not walk away untouched. By far, one of the most riveting and revolting horror books I have ever read, well worth the money you spend.

Rating:
Summary: ...ummm....
Review: I read all the hype, and braced myself...It didn't help. This novel is the most disturbing reading experience I will ever endure...After this one you will be changed!!!

Rating:
Summary: A Must Read Book! Not 5 stars...10 stars!
Review: When I ordered this book from Amazon, I had also ordered a movie called 'Requiem for a Dream' which depicts the consequences of drug abuse in a brutal fashion. That is a must see movie just as this is a must read book.

I believe that this book should be required reading for "adults", especially those who tend to turn a blind eye toward the suffering of others. Real life stories, as depicted in this book, is a reality for many people all over America, not just children- the torture, degradation and humiliation of one person by another.

Just last year in Camden, NJ, a couple was arrested for nearly starving their 3 adoptive children to death. This couple had their own children whom they left pretty much alone, but neglected and starved the adoptive children. But the disturbing thing was that child welfare, who claimed to make periodic visits to check the the adoptive kids, claimed they never noticed anything wrong. One of the kids was a 17 year old boy who had been so malnurished that he was below 100 pounds.

As I read this book, I kept thinking of what happened in Camden. What Ketchum does is put you in the place of the tortured child. If you can handle the story, you'll find that you really empathize with this child. You can see throw their eyes. The torture, suffering and confusion. How seemingly normal people can very easily turn to their darker natures, which we all have...but also what happens if no one is there to pull you back. How hard it is to be good and how easy it is to be evil.

You also empathize with the narrator of the book who witnessed the torture. The narrator sinned himself by remaining silent...on more than one occasion I found myself really hating him because all he had to do was tell 'one' person or a cop, but he didn't. I've read over 100 novels and that has happened to me only 2 or 3 times!

This book shows how seductive evil can be... and all you have to do is block out that this is another human being you're doing it to. If you think of the victim as not human...an animal or an insect...you start to forget the price that will have to be paid by ALL involved.

If there are people who blast this book, I think it's because they do not want to accept that things like this actually happen. Now that this book is being sold as a trade paperback, perhaps more people will read it and realize the consequences of the actions of evil people...but also the consequences of doing nothing about it.

I would encourage that you pick up a copy and judge for yourself.
I think what you get out of this book really depends on what kind of person you are. If you're a good person, you'll take away lessons to be learned. If you're a bad person.....

Be prepared though...this book is very graphic, very brutal and very realistic.

Ketchum has a lot of guts to write something like this. I didn't find it pornographic or exploitive at all. Very, very few people would write something like this...they would be too concerned about the market value of it, how many copies will it sell. Ketchum, like Oliver Stone, isn't very concerned on what anyone else thinks. If they have something they want to say, they take advantage of their right to say it...to express themselves and not conform to what other people think.

I RESPECT that a lot!

Jack Ketchum is DEFINITELY an author on my must read list!

Rating:
Summary: The Girl Next Door
Review: After reading this book all I can say is wow. I had the unfortunate timing to finish it before I went to bed - I think i lay there for at least two hours trying to figure out what I had just put my brain through.

What a magnificent, terrifying and twisted story. It is honestly the very first book that has ever made me really think about the characters who stayed with me for days afterward. This sounds silly, but I had to put the book away, otherwise every time I saw it I would think about the story and get all "weirded out" again.

Mr. Ketchum is a talented and gifted story teller who really holds your attention.

Rating:
Summary: Closest to a five star book I've Read. 4-3/4 stars
Review: This is a truely an Horrific Book. But if you're into sci-fi/supernatural horror, then forget about reading it. Girl next Door is about the everyday horror we humans experience called Child Abuse. This book holds no punches. I read about 200 pages and actually had to contiplate whether I wanted to finish it, not because it was bad but because it was so vivid and disturbing. It starts off like a junior high school read. I'm not sure if this is how Ketchum writes (this is my first book by him) or if he decided to write in a simplistic style because it was narrated by a twelve year old boy. Either way it's affective. It pulls you in quickly with it's simplistic style and then holds the reader captive with it's horrific details.

I know this story is based on true incidents but even if it wasn't, I completely believe that horror like this is happening even today, probably even while I'm typing this review. True evil comes in the form of Human insanity, ignorance, and learned hatred. This book slaps you in the face with that reality. Anyone that can ignore the significance of this book is probably the same people that ignore or down play our world's contributions to racism, classicism, and sexism. The characters of this book in a way represent a microcosm of what this world was,is and probably will be in the future. While we hide behind our safety nets of enjoying Science fiction and supernatural horror of the likes of Sixth Sense, The Others, and Signs, real life horrors of child abuse are happening everyday. Well, this book forces you to deal with it. It is as close to experiencing child abuse without actually being abused or witnessing abuse.

I am not saying , you will like this book, But I am saying that this book should be apart of our pop cultured, american heritage as much as Tom Sawyer,Roots or War and Peace. Child abuse is REAL,, terrifing and truely evil and this book proves it.