Barbara Poelle
The wickedly talented Grand Central editor Jaime Levine and I were enjoying a recent outing together when I commented it’s been a while since I was sure that both Pennywise and The Other were standing in my closet.
I’ve just been needing a good old fashioned scare from a book.
So we get into a normal run of the mill discussion on some of the great ones, when she causually mentions, “I have this book coming out soon and…well…I’ll send you a copy and see what you think.” Of course I politely nod and smile and inquire about the plotline. Jaime says, “Well, it basically takes place between the hours of 10 p.m. and dawn in this small town in Wisconsin. There is a helicopter crash and then something starts killing people.”
Well, okay, I’m in. But not like, cannonball in. I’m just wading, you know, maybe up-to- my-calves-while-holding-a-tropical-drink in.
Jaime sends me the book.
Good cover. Nice, ominous colors. Striking imagery without being cartoon-y. Hefty in the hands but not daunting. A delightful mass market paperback with a solid one word title and an author whose name you can really bite into.
Afraid. By Jack Kilborn.
Okay, sure. Innocently, I pop it in my bag where it is safely nestled between an umbrella and my ereader. Maybe the corner creasing a bit from being nudged by my uber presumptuous stainless steel eco friendly klean kanteen, but otherwise innocuous, it rides quietly home with me on the subway on a brisk winter Friday night.
There is a delicious dinner when I get home (thanks babe) and some chatter. I unload my bag, stacking the contents nearby, flip open my ereader and settle in to read some manuscripts. My husband wanders by my roost on the couch. “What’s this?”
“A book Jaime gave me.”
“Can I check it out?”
“Yup.” (I may have also added, “Ooh, let’s make some popcorn.”)
So the Poelles nestle in for a craaaazy Friday night in New York City, the only sound the munching of popcorn and the flipping of pages as he settles in with Afraid. (I’m ereading, my pages don’t make noise.) About seven minutes later, Travis murmurs, “Whoa.” I glance up. Two minutes after that, “Oh, God.” I look up for a full beat. Thirty seconds later, “Oh, no…OH NO.”
I flop my ereader into my lap, “What? What’s happening?”
“This book, I, uh, it’s really scary.”
So I do that face (the same face, incidentally, that I use when his food looks better than mine, or I am cold and my sweater is sooo far away, or I want to watch the Die Hard marathon instead of go to MoMA) and he rolls his eyes and hands over the book.
Oh.
My.
God.
People, this is the kind of book where you wish you had arms like Sarasvati, one set of hands to hold the book and the other to cover your eyes while reading. I don’t want to get into too much detail here, (which is hilarious because I spent about 40 minutes outlining the entire book to Holly Root last week and in retrospect I think all she said was “Are you gonna have the soup?”) but let’s just say that, yes, this is a story about a small town in Wisconson from the hours of ten p.m. and dawn. There is a helicopter crash, and apparently something from that crash is systematically killing people. And oh yes, the people are not killed, ohh, what is the word I am looking for here. Can I say kindly? Gently? Hmm, okay, let’s see…sometimes there was silence. Sometimes there was screaming. And I am talking about me, here.
The thing about Afraid is that yes, there is violence and gore and of course the word “gratuitous” may be bandied about, but what I like about the violence is that it isn’t mysogonistic. The rage is equally and horrifically distributed between all the sexes; the only difference in the splatter is the blood type. And I gotta tell you, some of these ‘Sconnies do not go down with a whimper and a sigh. (Glossary: ‘Sconnies. What us Minnesota kids affectionately call Wisconsin kids…I have long tried to get my Sconnie friends to call us “’Sotes” but it hasn’t caught on yet) You spend the book vacilating between cheering them on and weeping with fear because you quickly fall in love with this little town and ohmygod she is just trying to hide and stay as quiet as possible as what goes on below surpasses human comprehension please please please stay quiet and then you turn and look and it is 2 am and your husband is sleeping gently beside you but you’re completely freaked so you poke him awake and then fake that you didn’t because he would be mad but you just don’t want to be alone when you click off the light.
So, yeah, uh, it scared me. Last night I was 99% sure that ________ was in my closet. (oh no, you’ll get no spoilers from me, dear friends, let me just say I am going to super
glue my socks on for, oh, say, the next year or so). This book is not for the faint of heart, so if you are the type of reader who will be setting aside Pride and Prejudice or The Notebook, thinking “I wonder what that adorable Barbara Poelle was talking about” just remember:
You’ve been warned.
Afraid will hit the shelves in about two months, so if you are interested in understanding why I still find myself listening for the floor creak that doesn’t quite fit the others or can’t quite look at a pocket swiss army knife the same again, it I promise it won’t kill you to preorder on Amazon.
Well, perhaps I shouldn’t make that particular promise.
Happy screaming.
