|
|
Peter Straub - Shadow Land, 1980
After writing "Ghost Story", I think everyone expected rather anxiously new material from Peter
Straub. "Shadow Land" came as another stunning bestseller and it became instantly a classic like "Ghost Story". This time,
the setting for the story was a private school in Arizona, where two young men become friends. Soon, they are summoned to
Vermont, where the uncle of one of the boys lives in a mysterious mansion inside the dark woods. The uncle, a powerful
magician, promises the two boys to teach them all his secrets. But his intentions aren't quite what they seem and the friends
will have to struggle to decide what's real and what is not...
As mythic as "Ghost Story", "Shadow Land" delivers even stronger images and a dreamlike enviroment.
There are a few weak points inside the novel, but Straub doesn't last long inside this breaches and he regains rapidly the
force in his narrative. The ending, I think, is his most powerful to date, driving to a shocking climax with eerie imagery.
The monsters are built with the same material as that of the nightmares. With the delicacy of a poet and the vigor of a talented
weaver of bad dreams, Straub has written another masterpiece, that, besides "Ghost Story", is one of the most representative
works in the horror field in the last decades.
|
|
|