Rating: 
Summary: Extraordinarily Horrible
Review: I love reading. I particularly enjoy the fantasy/horror/sci-fi genres. As I matured as a reader, I grew to enjoy writers as diverse as Toni Morrison, Milan Kundera,Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka. Though I still enjoy straightforward escapist entertainment, I am at this point in my life well-read enough to conclude that if a book makes no sense whatsoever to me, it probably is, in fact, nonsensical, regardless of what the New Yorker or the Publisher's Weekly says to the contrary.
Ordinary Horror, despite its artistic pretensions, was ludicrous. After laboring throuh this book, the only thing I could conclude with any certainty was that the author must be terrified of garbage trucks. Specifically, I counted at least three "frightening" repetitve descriptions of garbage trucks. The first description was intriguing, but the next time, it became boring and tedious. The author's incoherent obsession with garbage trucks was merely a microcosm of the entire boring, pointless novel.
Rating:
Summary: LIKE WATCHING BLOOD DRY
Review: I rarely write reviews of anything, but it's only right someone warn the uninitiated about this god awful thing."Ordinary Horror" is bad on many levels. "Professor" Searcy reminds me of a failed writing professor trying too hard to impress. I'll spare you the details (something I wish he would have done) and tell you this is the most confounding, unexciting, poorly written novel I've read in years. Beware, alright. (Note: The title evokes the remarkably good "Ordinary People" from back in the 70's. This book isn't even in the same league.)
Rating:
Summary: Ordinary Horror
Review: I really forced myself, however, I was unable to finish reading this book. I believe the author [ David Searcy ] confused "Tense" with "Tedious" in developing this story. I've read my fair share of books, however my vocabulary was no match for the word usage describing the most mundane objects and scenes. Often the Author used "seventeen word" sentences to describe the most banal objects such as the shade of the sunlight on wall molding, and ....... on and on. I had a difficult time finding any sentence structure that didn't require review in order to try and understand what was being said or described. In the end I gave up trying to finish this book and instead decided to write this review to ease my frustration ..... "As the setting sun shown through my window reminding me of those times during my childhood when my bedroom wall was painted a similar color of yellow, or was the color more pinkish with a bit less tawdriness on the borders near the carpeting, but then again, was it my childhood or my teenage years that I was recalling?" I feel better.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinarily Horrible
Review: I saw some favorable critical reviews of this book and bought it. I usually check out the Amazon reviews too. For some reason I didn't this time. Now all I can do is warn others to avoid wasting their time and money. Unless your idea of a great read is Finnegan's Wake. David Searcy is a good writer. Sadly he uses these skills in Ordinary Horror to construct a book that is both depressing and impossible to understand. The story in Ordinary Horror is enclosed in the fuzzy mist of the main character, who seems to be heading for senility. Events are difficult to make out and the story plods along like someone who is confused on heavy narcotics. The power of Searcy's writing drags you into this depressing morass, leaving you staggering around asking yourself where the story line can possibly be going. The only relief provided by the end of the book is that you don't have to keep reading. There is no more illumination to be found there than in the middle. The only people that I can imagine liking this book are English majors and graduate students who love to count coup on the rest of the world by claiming deep meaning in obscure and difficult to understand works. As for me, there are more books I want to read than I have time for. I wish that I had not invested time in this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Going nowhere
Review: I started this short book with high hopes as I'd read some glowing reviews of it. The first few pages were well-written and promised an eerie story that would creep up on the reader. However, by the time I got a third of the way through the book I became increasingly aggravated with the obliqueness, lack of affect of the protagonist, and minimal plot. Halfway through I just wanted to skip to the end and find out if ANYTHING happened. Basically, Ordinary Horror would have made a pretty good short story but is an extraordinarily dull novel.
Rating:
Summary: What was the Point?
Review: I think the FBI needs to investigate David Searcy. His book, Ordinary Horror, is obviously an encoded message, intended for Russian Intelligence. A message that I certainly was unable to decipher. To his credit, the author has a wonderful command of the English language. He describes simple, even mundane, objects and events with such vivid detail, you form a stunningly clear image of what's going on. You can really feel the emotions of the characters and understand their experiences. However, the author never takes the story beyond a series of excruciatingly detailed observations, and the detail finally becomes overwhelming. At the start, the story seems to hold so much promise -- a mysterious plant that wreaks havoc on it's owner and his neighbors. But, the author quickly swerves away from this plot and never really explores any of the wonderful possibilities that it holds. Disparate elements of the plot are thrown at the reader throughout the book, but in the end are never explained and never tied together. Just as you think things might be starting to come together, the story slams into yet another dead end. Another red herring -- you realize that the agonizing discourse on Amazonian biotoxins that you just trudged through leads the story nowhere -- in fact has nothing at all to do with the outcome. The cover jacket promises: "As incidents of 'ordinary horror' multiply, Searcy's extraordinary tale gradually builds to an apocalyptic -- and unforgettable -- climax." Unfortunately, the story builds and builds, but never reaches the promised climax. As I turned the last page and finished the last paragraph, I remained hopeful that something brilliant would rise from everything that had been constructed up to that point. In the end, I was just left asking: "what was the point?".
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I was really disappointed with this author. I love horror above all other genres and I really expected something better based on the first paragraph of "Ordinary Horror". I'm only rating this book 2 stars because at least Searcy knows how to use the English language. But he was overly descriptive at some points, and quite often for no reason. Searcy did at least keep up the feeling of dread throughout much of the book, but that just made it all the more disappointing when nothing happened. I keep thinking that maybe I missed something - all I can think is that the plants somehow drove everyone crazy and that's supposed to be the horrorific bit of it?
Rating:
Summary: Deliberately Obtuse; Should just be called "Ordinary"
Review: I was very much looking forward to this book--it sounded so good. But as I read--and waited for something to happen--it became apparent I had made a poor choice. Nothing ever did happen. If I am wrong and something did, it was on pages my book was missing. Though it opens up the door for questions on my intelligence (go ahead, I am secure in my mental capabilities) I must say that I am not sure *what happened* in this book. I actually went online to see what others' takes were on it, to make my reading seem less like a waste of time. Instead of a plot the writer seemed to attempt to write of things quotidian--and try to make them sinister. I would read parts over to see what word I had missed that would explain the sequence--but there was nothing. Utterly incomprehensible. Someone earlier wrote--in the course of praising the book!--that he did not remember the book well. That would be because there was nothing to remember.
Rating:
Summary: This Book Is Too Obscure To Be "Ordinary" Or Horrifying
Review: I'm sorry I was not able to give this book Zero Stars. Mr Searcy starts off his novel with a promising hook: his protagonist, Mr. Delabano, sends away for mysterious "gopherbane" plants advertised in the back of a magazine. The plants arrive after a two month delay and are duely planted. And from that moment on the storyline devolves into a series of senseless and tedious events that are experienced through the eyes of the seventy-year-old Mr Delabano who is apparently incapable of any emotion or of critical thinking. After suffering through pages and pages of stultifying phrases that lead to nothing, certainly not any sort of recognizable story or climax, I admit to be completely flummoxed as to why this work was ever published. Save your money. Instead may I suggest filling a room with over-dosed, schizophrenic mental patients reporting on the weather and then randomly shuffling the resulting pages. It would make for a far more interesting read.
Rating: 
Summary: What's not to get?
Review: I'm surprised nobody has reached the same conclusion as myself.
The plants were an opiate, an hallucinogenic... they had the neighbours and Frank stoned out of their minds for months. The effects were like LSD, where Mr Delabano found himself losing hours at a time staring at minute details, hence the narratives long, ponderous attention to the explicit details. It is why he couldn't recognise a dead animal, or Janie at the window. It also mirrors the outline of the book he has on Amazonian botany which features similarly pointless stories - and similarly pointless photos of seamingly nondescript pathways which are labelled 'luminesence'. The authors were clearly exposed to the same plant. Hence the title Ordinary Horror. Ther horror was not lurking within some monster, it was in the tedium of suburban life as highlighted and drawn into focus by the effects of the plants. ie. the sisters fixed to the TV. The horror....the horror.
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