Middle of the road 3 stars from me. I have read a few weird/eery/supernatural horrors and this was neither a favourite nor a least favourite. I appreciated what Peter Rock had to say about estranged family relationships, the change of memories over time, and can we trust our own accounts of things. Super eery and unsettling, this book made me feel exactly how I was hoping it would. I like the supernatural and weird elements, lots of fun. I just wish this was a full length novel of 300-350 pages so we could’ve gotten more from it. I wanted more build up and I really was hoping to see more of the father-daughter relationship and get more of an understanding of what happened when Helen was a girl.

Fantastic concept, fun and spooky elements. Just left me wanting more. Would definitely read from Rock again!

Thank you to Soho Press and NetGalley for an eARC of this horror novella :)

It was interesting to read this book right after My Abandonment. They seem closely connected, particularly through the first half of Passersthrough. A father and daughter in the woods. This book takes a supernatural bent that reminded me of Iain Reid. It wasn’t quite as eerie as Reid’s books, but there was a similar ambiguity.

i found this concept fascinating, but it failed to hold my attention. it felt kind of sloppy, and the plot slipped through my fingers. DNF.

Started this but did not get far before I decided to DNF. I did not like the premise of an old man being taken advantage of by a young woman. Was she trying to steal from him or kill him? Not a good story for me.

Passersthrough is a cerebral, haunting, thought-provoking novel centered on a father and daughter who are trying to rebuild their relationship after decades of estrangement. When Helen was 11 years old, she disappeared while on a camping trip with her father Benjamin in Mount Rainier National Park. She reappeared a week later hundreds of miles from where she was lost with no memory of the time she was gone. Soon after Helen's reentry into his life, Benjamin meets a strange woman and boy who seem unusually invested in discovering the truth about Helen's disappearance.

Nothing about Passersthrough is straightforward; this is a book that requires a lot of interpretation on the reader's part, and likely each reader will interpret it differently. For me, this was a book about the reverberations of trauma and grief, aging, and unconditional love. It's also an atmospheric and sinister novel, with well-integrated horror elements that truly unnerved me. Some unique plot elements -- locations one can only find by getting lost, beings that are merely "passersthrough" in our world -- made this such a riveting, unsettling reading experience.

Some aspects of the plot were a bit too cerebral, specifically in the final scenes of the book, and this is certainly a book that asks more questions than it actually answers. But for the right reader, Passersthrough is a strange, horrific, surprisingly tender novel about being lost and being found.

PASSERSTHROUGH :: Peter Rock

Not since Iain Reed's I'm Thinking of Ending Things have I finished a book and thought "I have little to no clue what I just read, but I loved every damn minute." Peter Rock's Passersthrough is all kinds of crazypants, and I am far from understanding everything that happened, but in the words of Trip in Meatballs, "It just doesn't matter!"

The basics of what I DO know are this--Helen and her father Benjamin have been estranged for more than two decades, since something mysterious happened when she was eleven and they were camping together in Mt. Rainier National Park. Helen disappeared and wasn't found until a week later and 100 miles from their camp.

After her mother's death, Helen begins reaching out to Benjamin, although tentatively. She gives her father a machine that he can speak into (and vice versa) and his words will be transcribed and sent to her machine. Helen is not yet to the point where she trusts him enough to spend time him or speak directly about what happened.

Through their communications, we learn snippets of what that camping trip involved, including a blue tarp and a lake they called Sad Clown Lake, a body of water filled with bones that never seems to be in the same place twice. They also had a notebook they left in their tent while they were out, leaving it for "passersthrough" to write in.

As Helen and Benjamin talk remotely, Benjamin has a semi-catastrophic encounter with a woman and her dog in the market parking lot. Melissa helps Benjamin home and tends to him, but also reads some of the transcriptions on Benjamin's machine. As Melissa and her "brother," who are squatting in a "murder house," try to help Benjamin figure out what happened on that ill-fated camping trip, things start to get really cuckoo.

To share more would be both too much information and me providing a perception that might not be anywhere near correct. Although the story seemed to remain outside my grasp, it was so beautifully written and intriguing that I didn't want to put it down for a minute. It's haunting, eerie, bizarre, lovely, and tragic. Rock is a beautiful writer (his heartbreaking My Abandonment was a gift of a novel and also made into a fantastic film, Leave No Trace) and even though much of Passersthrough escaped me, I enjoyed the hell out of it and will pick up Rock's next work without hesitation.

What did I just read. I am so confused. The book description intrigued me -- an 11 year old girl went missing on a camping trip with her father, reappears after a week with no memory of where she was, then reconnects with him 25 years later to try to puzzle out what happened. Sounds interesting. But there is so much else thrown in here - a disappearing lake that shows up in different places when you are lost, a woman and her son who interact with the father in strange ways, the fact that a large part of the father-daughter communication is through fax (huh?). The writing is atmospheric and beautiful but the plot was too all-over-the-place and open to interpretation for me.

Twenty-five years after Helen disappeared for a week in the woods while camping with her father before being returned a week later, the two are estranged. They reconnect at Benjamin’s home in Portland, Oregon to try and figure out what happened all those years ago. Meanwhile, Benjamin meets a woman and boy who want to help him learn more about his daughters disappearance and lead him to a “murder house, uncanny possession, and a bone-filled body of water known as Sad Clown Lake, a lake ‘that could only be found by getting lost, that was never in the same place twice’.”

I was intrigued by the summary and was ready for a wild and creepy ride. Overall, it was fast-paced and I finished it quickly, but overall it was just okay. Maybe I should have done it in print? Sometimes I don’t click with male presenting narrators. I lost the thread a little here and there, and for such a short book, I felt like I should have been invested the whole time.

That’s okay, though, it’s still a cool premise, and it you like creepy and mysterious, this one might be right up your alley. It’s out on April 19th.

*Thank you to Soho press, Peter Rock and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review*

Previously posted at https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/passersthrough/

“There was no door now, no walls, no sky, no ground. No feet, no legs, no arms, no hands. Only the voices, rushing through the branches of hidden trees.”
–Peter Rock, Passersthrough

Sad Clown Lake is a place you can only find by getting lost. This is only a place you can find by getting lost. The lake will call people to it, but it is never in the same physical location. The passersthrough are described as people caught between places, between some place and some place else. As with most of this brilliant novel, the description is ethereal, atmospheric, and somewhat confusing. I have nothing to compare it to. There are parts of it that remind me of The Exorcist and there are parts of it that remind me of more mythological stories, such as Lore. The mythos part of the story starts gradually until it makes sense to the reader.

Benjamin, an older gentleman, seeks to reconnect with his estranged daughter, Helen, after 25 years. Helen disappeared on a camping trip with her father when she was just 11 years old. Gone for a week, she appears at a farmhouse deep in the country where the young couple living there take care of her, though she can’t walk and crab crawls through the house, eating everything in sight. This being said, the cast of characters are misfits, individually and with each other, which definitely adds a strange element to the book. Melissa, a young homeless woman, meets Benjamin when he gets bit by her rabid pit bull, Johnson, in a parking lot. She takes care of him and steals from his house, but reappears to help him solve the mystery of what happened to his daughter. Cisco, her younger cohort, squats with her in the hell house, a house where two young teens were murdered several years ago. Melissa, Cisco, Benjamin, and even Johnson. Helen, his daughter, is only available to talk to him through facsimiles and occasionally, a phone call. Though we never quite understand why Melissa is motivated to help Benjamin, and sometimes steals from his house and takes his car without asking, she is also endearing and gentle with him.

Passersthrough was brilliant and magical, though it is a thinking book. One must make connections in their own mind because the meaning of this book will be different for each individual reader. It is at once about love, time passing, good and evil. One of the most unusual books I have read this year, and I really enjoyed it.

Aren’t we all “passersthrough” in this life that is at once challenging to understand, filled with emotion and a passage from life to death?

This was an intriguing read, curious and not always clear so one had to make connections in your own mind. Was it about death, love, awareness of time passing, links to other worlds, after-death experiences, good and evil? Probably a bit of all. Benjamin seeks to re-connect with his daughter after 25 years. Lured by a woman and young boy, Benjamin follows a blue tarp and Sad Clown Lake that appears and disappears. This meandering, eerie tale addresses the mysteries of life/death, why and who we love, the long impacts of loss and murder, the potential for finding love again and the need to pursue losses until they are regained. A very unusual book that made me wonder in what world I am traveling. And sometimes in life, I think we cross into other worlds in our wondering and wandering. The idea that there are possibly “passersthrough” in our world seems hauntingly possible. And are we not all passers through from this life to another? And can we not be afraid together?