In the Night Room

Rating:
Summary: Very Disappointing
Review: Peter Straub has completely confused me. I have been an avid reader of his for better than ten years, and I have never been disappointed... well until now. "In the Night Room" is well below the standards that he has set. It is hard to put your finger on just one thing but here is a partial list of the things I found disppointing.

- This should have been a short story... there isn't enough material here for even a novella.

- Straub has borrowed very heavily from Stephen King ( "The Dark Half" and "Sun Dog") while borrowing isn't inately bad, Straub did very little on expand on the idea.

- This is an extremely confusing book... I never have trouble following plot lines in a book, but this one was major work for me. Examples.. Why did Willy go into the Dark Room? Why did Faber appear once (and only once) in Millhaven? Why exactly were dead people emailing Tim?

- Straub really didn't develop any of his characters- he depends on the reader remembering everyone from "Lost boy, lost girl". However, the new characters are very poorly developed.

Typically, Straub does a fine job of tidying up endings so that everything makes sense... he certainly failed here. While I remain a Straub fan I have to tell everyone (but die hard fans) to steer well clear of "In the Night Room".

Rating:
Summary: Imagination is Reality....or is it the other way around..???
Review: Ha! Another great read from Peter Straub. While I might not agree that this is his "greatest" work yet I also don't agree that it is his worst. Straub, like Dean Koontz, must be read and then pondered. Reading any of Straub's books like one would reads a comic book is a waste of time and a waste of money.

In the Night Room starts off with two separate story lines. It is not until later in the book that the reader realizes that one is real and one not. I thought at first that Straub was uncharacteristically weak in how he developed the Willy Bryce Patrick character but this lack of detail is intentional. In fact, the lack of specifics about Willy is essential to the plot.

The book moves quite rapidly. The pursuit of Tim Underhill and Willy by Mitchell Faber's henchmen moves the storyline nicely toward climax. Readers should know that In the Night Room is a continuation of the story started in Lost Boy, Lost Girl. This book will make more sense if you've read the first book. Many readers who grab In the Night Room as their first Straub book may be unnecessarily disappointed.

Straub usually develops his stories slowly. In the Night Room is a much quicker read. Straub is also one of the best writers in developing his characters as they relate to the plot. You get what you need but nothing more.

In the Night Room is a worthwhile read. While not a Ghost Story, it is a gripping story.

Rating:
Summary: Big Fan of Straub is Disappointed
Review: I have read all of Peter Straub's books -- he is one of my favorite authors. I felt very cheated by this book. I put in an advance order for it and expected his usual great story. This seemed like the tag end of "Lost Boy, Lost Girl," composed only of character and plot relating to that book. It does not stand on its own and even as a companion to "Lost Boy, Lost Girl" it has little value. I don't know how to explain how this book could be so bad. The "trick" plot device was not impressive -- no technique is more valuable than the story, and there was no story here.

Rating:
Summary: Makes no sense
Review: I picked this author up after reading a book he did with Stephen King. I was sorely disapointed. Not only did the book make no sense, it had no plot, no charater development and I had to force myself to finish it. Whatever great conventions he is breaking, I obviously must not get it. Go to the library before wasting your money.

Rating:
Summary: lost in the night room
Review: In "In the Night Room", Peter Straub's literary alter ego Tim Underhill is having a rather odd week (and considering some of his prior adventures, that's no little thing). He is recieving strange e-mails with wierd and vaugly threatening messeges, he has a nut case fan stalking him with different copies of his books than was published, he is seeing his dead sister more than usual, and a character from the book he currently working on has just approached him at a book signing and asked him for help. As it turns out, some ghosts of the people who were involved in the incidents from Underhill's last book ("lost boy, lost girl") want him to correct a mistake that he made concerning one of the book's killer's victim. This is a rather surrealistic book that is hard too follow. It goes back and forth between reality and fantasy with no wayt o know what is real or not. I understand that this is probably what Straub was wanting to do, to leave the reader disoriented, but I found it counterproductive. It was hard to keep track of which characters were not worth remembering (like Giles and Roman Richard, the two mafia goons who chased Willy into the real world) and who was (like the Mitchell Faber/Joseph Kalender character). Plus add in a rouge angel and an entity who seems to exist in a nowhere world of the internet, that is a lot more that didn't really add up. As a sequel to last years "lost boy, lost girl", it didn't make the events of that novel any clearer, if anything it just made the story that much less compresheinsable.

Rating:
Summary: dead tree
Review: ink on paper = dead tree
ink on paper = money
do not spend your dead trees on this dead tree
if you find it at your library put it back on the shelf

Rating:
Summary: LSD is easier to understand
Review: Like Annie, I found this book a huge disappointment. Unlike her, I decided not to finish it -- why waste my time? This author must have been on serious drugs in order to write such tripe. One shouldn't have to work so hard when reading a book for pleasure. As a fan of Stephen King's first few books, I quite reading him when he got as weird as Peter Straub. I can see why they're friends.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but deeply disappointing for personal reasons
Review: Peter Straub is a wonderful writer and his character Tim Underhill has meant a lot to me as a protagonist of best-selling horror/suspense novels who was gay, but whose sexuality was not a big deal, just part of who he was. I enjoyed the first half of this book tremendously. To have Underhill suddenly fall in love with a woman, even one of his own creation, felt like a sock in the gut. Every day in a hundred ways, the world seems to express its belief that homosexuality, unlike heterosexuality, is merely a "preference" that can be easily changed if the homosexual person just meets the right member of the opposite sex. I didn't expect that from Peter Straub and it was a big, big disappointment. I am not sure this is a valid criticism, since Mr. Straub shouldn't be expected to write with any political/sexual agenda in mind or to please anyone but himself, but it destroyed my suspension of disbelief and spoiled my pleasure in a heretofore wonderful story.

Rating:
Summary: Primarily for established fans
Review: Straub's latest looks like his best for the first 200 pages or so (this is actually a short one for Straub - only 330) then loses steam, voiding the mystery in favor of an exploration into the blurry merge of imagination and reality, creation and perception.

The story begins with two separate plot lines. Willy Patrick, a Newberry-award winning YA novelist, her husband and daughter killed two years before, fears she is losing her mind - again - as she is about to embark on a new marriage. She finds herself succumbing to a conviction that her dead daughter is being held in a local New Jersey warehouse, and inexplicably losing hours of time. To the reader, her character also seems peculiarly erratic, veering between dependence on a secretive, dark and domineering man, and willful, decisive independence.

Chapters featuring continuing character and Straub alter-ego Tim Underhill alternate. Underhill, a writer at work on a new book, keeps catching meaningful glimpses of his dead 9-year-old sister while receiving demanding, but incomprehensible e-mail from dead people. He's also being stalked by a hostile book collector; one seeking the "real" book - not the book the author wrote, but the one he meant to write.

So far, so good. Intriguing ideas, thoughtful characters, lots of questions, lurking evil and suspense. The story clips along in short accelerating chapters until - bang - the two meet and much is revealed. While some suspense remains - Underhill has a task to do and Patrick's survival is shaky - the interest mostly revolves around speculative musings on reality and some intriguing, rather creepy probing into the relationship of ego, love and sex. Well written, but primarily for serious Straub fans.

Rating:
Summary: Is this the Perfect Novel Jasper Kohle Seeks?
Review: The fact that I considered all the following titles for this review is an indication of the many diverse ways in which this story can be viewed by a reader:

CAN TIM UNDERHILL SAVE WILLY PATRICK FROM HER FATE ? (a somewhat weird mystery)

THE BLURRED LINE BETWEEN FICTION AND REALITY (an examination of how a writer's experience influences his fictional characters )

A STEPHEN KING TYPE STORY WITH TRACES OF JASPER FFORDE (an alternate universe tale)

EMAILS FROM THE GRAVE AND A SEARCH FOR REDEMPTION (a tale of religion and the supernatural)

This is the first book by Peter Straub that I have read, and it was almost immediately obvious how he came to collaborate with Stephen King on BLACK HOUSE and THE TALISMAN. It is weird, absorbing, thought provoking and intense. It is difficult to provide many details without divulging spoilers; in fact, several of the reviews which I read subsequent to my completion of the book would have significantly diluted my enjoyment of the story. Thus, in this review I will provide a brief outline of the concept behind the story which I hope will be sufficient to let potential readers decide if it is their type of fiction without spoiling the development of the story.

This book explores the intersection of several lives and the seemingly inevitable forces which brought them together. Its essence is partially revealed by the title of Part 1 (of 5), "Willy's Losing her Mind Again/So Is Tim". In Chapter One (a single page) we meet Tim Underhill, a novelist in great distress. We gradually learn the reasons for Tim's distress, which include the struggles involved in writing his current novel, strange emails which he soon realizes are from long dead childhood associates, the appearance of the ghost of his murdered nine year old sister, and the harassment of a seemingly crazed fan named Jasper Kohle who is searching for the "real book" hidden among all the published copies of LOST BOY LOST GIRL, Tim's highly successful last novel. (Of course, this is the title of Peter Straub's last novel, which received the Bram Stoker award and perhaps did as much for his recognition in reality as it has for his protagonist Tim Underhill in Straub's novel.)

In the next chapter (a mere two pages), we meet Willy Patrick, the perhaps even more troubled author of the Newberry Award (for YA fiction) winning IN THE NIGHT ROOM. (The identical title to the book the reader has just started is of course the initial indication of the examination of the line between fiction and reality that will be explored throughout the rest of this novel. Willy is troubled by her overwhelming emotional response that her daughter Holly needs to be rescued from the Michigan Produce warehouse to which Willy has been drawn, despite Willy's knowledge that her daughter and husband were killed in an accident which so traumatized Willy that she has only recently resumed a somewhat normal life after extensive treatment at a psychiatric facilty in Massachusetts. When we soon learn that Tim also spent time in a similar institution in response to the traumatic stress he suffered while on military duty in Vietnam, it appears inevitable that the strange events which are simultaneously happening to them will eventually cause their lives to intersect.

The remainder of the first section of the book describes the events impacting Tim and Willy in alternate chapters, and it is very effective in creating an increasing sense of foreboding for the future of both characters. As the novel subsequently races towards its conclusion, there are characters too numerous to describe. The complexity is indicated by some of the more important, who include Mitchell Faber, Willy's mysterious and controlling fiancee; Tom Hartland, Willy's long time friend and confidante; Cyrax, Tim's otherworldly guide from the ancient empire of Byzantium; Merlin L'Duith, the narrator of a crucial segment of the novel, and the avenger WCHWHLLDN, whose identity the reader is finally left to determine.

In summary, this is a multilayered story that examines how we determine the reality of events. (I.e. are things what they appear to be?) It is about the lasting impact of evil, and at the same time can be viewed as a tale of how redemption and perhaps even salvation can arise in the wake of horrible tragedy. It is certainly also about the personal responsibility for our actions which confronts us all. Just as mind games are played with the characters of this story, mind games and word games abound for the reader. In this respect, the use of anagrams is another clever elementof this story. This is not a book for speed readers, the essence of it revolves around the details which are necessary to follow the bizarre twists taken as the plot develops. However, if you are intrigued by the weird concept of reading a story about two authors living in an alternate universe who have written books bearing the titles of Straub's two most recent books, you will probably share my immense enjoyment of this book.

Tucker Andersen