Member Review
Review by
Lucia P, Media/Journalist
The fun of a Paul Tremblay book is figuring out, bit by bit, exactly what kind of story you're reading. It's always SOMETHING - a ghost story, a demonic exorcism tale, an apocalypse narrative - and yet, it's also always... different. Unexpected. Because one of the many things Tremblay excels at is taking a well-worn trope or genre and then turning it, spinning it into something new.
The same is true of The Pallbearer's Club, which, it turns out, is a vampire story. But as we follow our protagonist, the pseudonymous Art Barbara, as he grows up in Massachusetts, finds a place in the punk scene of Providence, and drifts in and out of the orbit of his friend Mercy, becoming convinced that she's a variety of vampire in the process - we also come to realize that it's also a story about conformity, and nonconformity, and what we'll do - the lengths we'll go - to fit in somewhere, anywhere. To find our people.
And, crucially, it's a story where there are competing narratives: Art's, Mercy's, and - perhaps most importantly - what may have ACTUALLY happened, outside of Art's or Mercy's patently unreliable presentations of events. (I do love a good unreliable narrator, and here, we've got several.)
Fans of A Head Full of Ghosts will undoubtedly find much to love in this one. The form is unconventional, presented a memoir - Art's - that may or may not actually be a novel, and complicated by marginalia from Mercy. Tonally - and particularly when it comes to Mercy's commentary - there's a lot here that feels like it lives in the same kind of place as the blog entries in A Head Full of Ghosts.
A Paul Tremblay book is like a Magic Eye image: There's always something else to see if you look at it the right way. And for that reason - among many, many others - The Pallbearer's Club is a joy to read.
Just prepared to be something of an emotional train wreck by the end of it.
The same is true of The Pallbearer's Club, which, it turns out, is a vampire story. But as we follow our protagonist, the pseudonymous Art Barbara, as he grows up in Massachusetts, finds a place in the punk scene of Providence, and drifts in and out of the orbit of his friend Mercy, becoming convinced that she's a variety of vampire in the process - we also come to realize that it's also a story about conformity, and nonconformity, and what we'll do - the lengths we'll go - to fit in somewhere, anywhere. To find our people.
And, crucially, it's a story where there are competing narratives: Art's, Mercy's, and - perhaps most importantly - what may have ACTUALLY happened, outside of Art's or Mercy's patently unreliable presentations of events. (I do love a good unreliable narrator, and here, we've got several.)
Fans of A Head Full of Ghosts will undoubtedly find much to love in this one. The form is unconventional, presented a memoir - Art's - that may or may not actually be a novel, and complicated by marginalia from Mercy. Tonally - and particularly when it comes to Mercy's commentary - there's a lot here that feels like it lives in the same kind of place as the blog entries in A Head Full of Ghosts.
A Paul Tremblay book is like a Magic Eye image: There's always something else to see if you look at it the right way. And for that reason - among many, many others - The Pallbearer's Club is a joy to read.
Just prepared to be something of an emotional train wreck by the end of it.
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