NOS4A2

I know I'm in the grip of a good horror novel (a rarity) when I want to keep reading but hesitate because I'm worried about what will happen to the characters. That seems to happen only with writers in one family--Stephen King and his son, Joe Hill. I know Hill deserves to be treated as his own man, but the apple hasn't dropped far from the tree. This guy can scare the bejeesus out of me.

I fully enjoyed his last novel, Heart-Shaped Box, but I think he's topped himself with NOS4A2, especially in the creation of a first-class villain and a great heroine. It also has some very profound things to say about imagination, childhood, and parenthood.

We meet Victoria (Vic) McQueen when she's a little girl. She discovers she has a unique talent--she can find lost things. She does this by riding her bicycle over a nearly dilapidated bridge, which takes her exactly where the missing thing is, even if it's in a different state. Furthermore, the bridge doesn't exist in reality, just in her own mind.

She's set on a course to meet the murderous Charlie Manx, a kid-snatcher who has created his own diabolical world, Christmasland, where every day it's Christmas and children will be the same age for the rest of their lives and always be happy. But the reality is a bit different.

I found this creation of imaginary worlds fascinating, because I've always had a vivid fantasy life, and wondered if I could think hard enough I could make it real. Manx, in his twisted way, thinks he's helping children, but when he messes with Vic McQueen he's got a real battle on his hands.

The creation of Manx is the greatest part of the book. Part of his power is his car, a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, and the license plate reads NOS4A2, which represents Nosferatu, and Manx is described as looking very much like Max Schreck (I pictured him more as C. Montgomery Burns). He is probably over a hundred years old, and can survive an autopsy. "Against this background of drifting vapor, Manx was an apparition from a circus: the human skeleton crossed with the stilt walker, an impossibly tall and gaunt and ravaged figure in an archaic tailcoat. His misshapen bald head and beaky nose brought to mind vultures. The mist played tricks with his shadow, so it seemed he was walking downhill through a series of dark, Manx-shaped doorways, each bigger than the last."

Vic is another great character, who is scarred by a childhood encounter with Manx. She has a son whom Manx will attempt to exact revenge on, but she is one bad-ass chick, fully tattooed and riding a Triumph motorcycle, her body bruised and battered. There is a sweet relationship with the boy's father, Lou Carmody. The son, named Bruce Wayne Carmody, is another well-defined character: "It wasn't that he wanted to stay indoors. He wanted to stay inside his phone. It was his bridge away from a world where Mom was a crazy alcoholic and Dad was a three-hundred-pound car mechanic who had dropped out of high school and who wore an Iron Man costume to comic-book conventions."

Hill's style is very reminiscent of his father's, in that he uses very specific pop culture references and has a macabre sense of humor: "There was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running." But he can write some breathtaking passages: "She was seventeen and unafraid and liked the sound of the wind rustling the ivy around the entrance of the bridge. She put her feet on the pedals and rode. She heard the tires bumpety-thump up onto the wood, heard the planks knocking beneath her. There was no sensation of drop, no ten-story plunge into the arctic cold of the Merrimack River. There was a building roar of white noise. There was a twinge of pain in her left eye."

Hill is not so distancing that he doesn't make references to his father's book, implying that they exist in the same world. He mentions the town of Derry, Maine, which is featured in many of King's books. I wonder if they could be convinced to write a book together.