Author: Paul Tremblay
First Published: 2022
Contains Spoilers
The Blurb: 1988, and puberty has hit Art Barbara hard - he's a painfully socially awkward teenager, underweight, acne-ridden, and bent crooked by scoliosis. Worse, he has no extra credits to get him into college. So Art starts the Pallbearers’ Club, dedicated to mourning the homeless and lonely – the people with no one else to bury them. It might be a small club, unpopular and morbid, but it introduces Art to Mercy Brown, who is into bands, local history, folklore and digging up the dead.
Decades later, Art is writing his memoir to try and make sense of it all, because nothing about Mercy is simple. It’s all a matter of trust, right? Their friendship twists and coils around the pair of them, captured in Polaroid snapshots and sweaty gigs and the freaky, inexplicable flashes of nightmare that lurk in a folded jacket at night.
Because Art is writing his memoir to make sense of it all, but Mercy is reading it too. Mercy thinks Art’s novel – because this isn’t a memoir – needs some work, and she’s more than happy to set the record straight. What if Art didn’t get everything right? Come on, Art, you can’t tell just one side of the story…
Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unforgettable and unsettling friendship.
The review: I was contacted by my friend Dave, who is a Paul Tremblay fan and was reading this volume when he realised that it may well be my sort of book. To be fair, when I looked and saw in the blurb the name Mercy Brown, my mind, of course, went straight to vampires and the New England case. Many thanks for the tip, Dave.
The book itself… I’d like to say that it was a coming of age novel – for to some degree that is how it reads at first with the socially awkward Art Barbara (not his real name) creating an extra-curricular club to help at funerals for those buried without mourners (or very few) and through it meets Mercy Brown (again not her real name). However, this goes beyond that coming of age and into adulthood and middle age. Mercy does know about the historical Mercy Brown, tells Art Mercy's story (for a school project) and wants to find evidence of vampires (through the blue orbs associated with many New England vampire cases).
The book is written as a memoir but it is then marked through with corrections and end notes by Mercy, who is clearly reading the manuscript and correcting the story as per her point of view or just adding her two penn'orth especially when she feels he is being melodramatic. This editing is to the point of constantly crossing out memoir and replacing it with novel when the former appears in text as she feels the story is so embellished it doesn’t deserve to be called a memoir. Her corrections, added in a handwriting like font, make this an even more fascinating read, with the author offering two views to his story without the need to be in dialogue together. It is very clever and is reminiscent (in cleverness not device) of Iain Banks – indeed because of Art’s place in the local punk/music scene there was perhaps the briefest touch, or an air, of Espedair Street by Banks also.
The vampirism, which Art becomes more and more convinced of, seems to be much more energy vampirism. We get the feeling of being drained, the sensation of something sat on the chest at night and a sense of ordinary objects (jackets) being used as conduits for the feed, becoming nightmarishly animate. The lore plays around what we know of the New England beliefs and Tremblay, in his acknowledgments, points to Michael Bell’s marvellous Food for the Dead as his prime research volume. Mentioned in Bell’s book, Lovecraft’s the Shunned House gets mentioned in text also.
I thoroughly enjoyed this; crisp and intelligent writing that kept you interested and, primarily, explored the characters and friendship, with the text veering into an uncanny and occasionally horrific space used effectively but sparingly. The prose felt, due to it being Art’s words, drawn out in places but was also beautifully constructed to keep the reader engaged. I suppose, however, that the text's ability to engage you depends on how much the character of Art engages you and some might feel the horror was too sparse. That said, it has unusual vampirism and strange lore that could be distorted by insobriety, poor memory, melodrama or, on the other hand, perhaps Art’s memoir is more accurate than Mercy would have us believe. 7.5 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
Decades later, Art is writing his memoir to try and make sense of it all, because nothing about Mercy is simple. It’s all a matter of trust, right? Their friendship twists and coils around the pair of them, captured in Polaroid snapshots and sweaty gigs and the freaky, inexplicable flashes of nightmare that lurk in a folded jacket at night.
Because Art is writing his memoir to make sense of it all, but Mercy is reading it too. Mercy thinks Art’s novel – because this isn’t a memoir – needs some work, and she’s more than happy to set the record straight. What if Art didn’t get everything right? Come on, Art, you can’t tell just one side of the story…
Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unforgettable and unsettling friendship.
The review: I was contacted by my friend Dave, who is a Paul Tremblay fan and was reading this volume when he realised that it may well be my sort of book. To be fair, when I looked and saw in the blurb the name Mercy Brown, my mind, of course, went straight to vampires and the New England case. Many thanks for the tip, Dave.
The book itself… I’d like to say that it was a coming of age novel – for to some degree that is how it reads at first with the socially awkward Art Barbara (not his real name) creating an extra-curricular club to help at funerals for those buried without mourners (or very few) and through it meets Mercy Brown (again not her real name). However, this goes beyond that coming of age and into adulthood and middle age. Mercy does know about the historical Mercy Brown, tells Art Mercy's story (for a school project) and wants to find evidence of vampires (through the blue orbs associated with many New England vampire cases).
The book is written as a memoir but it is then marked through with corrections and end notes by Mercy, who is clearly reading the manuscript and correcting the story as per her point of view or just adding her two penn'orth especially when she feels he is being melodramatic. This editing is to the point of constantly crossing out memoir and replacing it with novel when the former appears in text as she feels the story is so embellished it doesn’t deserve to be called a memoir. Her corrections, added in a handwriting like font, make this an even more fascinating read, with the author offering two views to his story without the need to be in dialogue together. It is very clever and is reminiscent (in cleverness not device) of Iain Banks – indeed because of Art’s place in the local punk/music scene there was perhaps the briefest touch, or an air, of Espedair Street by Banks also.
The vampirism, which Art becomes more and more convinced of, seems to be much more energy vampirism. We get the feeling of being drained, the sensation of something sat on the chest at night and a sense of ordinary objects (jackets) being used as conduits for the feed, becoming nightmarishly animate. The lore plays around what we know of the New England beliefs and Tremblay, in his acknowledgments, points to Michael Bell’s marvellous Food for the Dead as his prime research volume. Mentioned in Bell’s book, Lovecraft’s the Shunned House gets mentioned in text also.
I thoroughly enjoyed this; crisp and intelligent writing that kept you interested and, primarily, explored the characters and friendship, with the text veering into an uncanny and occasionally horrific space used effectively but sparingly. The prose felt, due to it being Art’s words, drawn out in places but was also beautifully constructed to keep the reader engaged. I suppose, however, that the text's ability to engage you depends on how much the character of Art engages you and some might feel the horror was too sparse. That said, it has unusual vampirism and strange lore that could be distorted by insobriety, poor memory, melodrama or, on the other hand, perhaps Art’s memoir is more accurate than Mercy would have us believe. 7.5 out of 10.
In Paperback @ Amazon US
In Paperback @ Amazon UK
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