PUBLISHER: David McKay Company, 1971GENRE: Fiction/Suspense
SETTING: "northern suburb", USA
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: D
FROM PUBLISHER: Albert and Alice Graves live a normal, if monotonous, domestic life. They’ve never had children; they spend their days tending to their home and enjoying their time together. One day, when the oil man, Richard, is refilling their furnace, Alice invites him to dinner, never suspecting that a casual act of charity will lead to a horrifying, morbid discovery in the crawlspace underneath their beloved house.
The Graves take Richard into their lives, becoming attached to his presence as though to the son they never had. Their town, though, is not nearly so welcoming. When the locals lash out against the Graves and their strange houseguest, the contented household is irrevocably drawn into a darkness they could not have imagined.
MY THOUGHTS: This takes place in the USA but the state isn't given. It's a very dull and boring story that had so much potential. None of it makes any sense and there's no point to it. Richard's an odd character, eighteenish, and for some unknown reason lives in their crawlspace and even poops in there like an animal. He doesn't seem to have much social skills and is just strange. I neither like nor dislike him.
What I don't like at all is how the Graves, who are near sixty years old, take him in and treat him like a son, like he's someone they've known forever. They know he's odd as hell and still let him into their home to live? Only in fiction.
This book is filled with the type of characters I hate; small town police officers who like to cause trouble, troubled youth who get away with causing mischief and harassing others, and they all speak with horrible grammar, that is everyone except the main characters.
The end was puzzling, with the appearance of Richard's father. No clue why he showed up since he's been a deadbeat dad Richard's whole life. It would have made more sense to have inserted him into the story midway. Maybe then it would have done something for the plot, maybe would have made us sympathize with Richard more. I don't like having to wait until the end of the story to get some background information on Richard. Now I know why he has abandonment issues.
The 1972 made-for-TV movie is more boring than the book but that was to be expected. The three main characters were older than they should have been.
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