A Dark Matter

By: Peter Straub

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 14 hrs and 33 mins

Publisher's summary

The incomparable master of horror and suspense returns with a powerful, brilliantly terrifying novel that redefines the genre in original and unexpected ways.

The charismatic and cunning Spenser Mallon is a campus guru in the 1960s, attracting the devotion and demanding sexual favors of his young acolytes. After he invites his most fervent followers to attend a secret ritual in a local meadow, the only thing that remains is a gruesomely dismembered body - and the shattered souls of all who were present.

Years later, one man attempts to understand what happened to his wife and to his friends by writing a book about this horrible night, and it’s through this process that they begin to examine the unspeakable events that have bound them in ways they cannot fathom, but that have haunted every one of them through their lives.

As each of the old friends tries to come to grips with the darkness of the past, they find themselves face-to-face with the evil triggered so many years earlier. Unfolding through the individual stories of the fated group’s members, A Dark Matter is an electric, chilling, and unpredictable novel that will satisfy Peter Straub's many ardent fans, and win him legions more.

©2010 Peter Straub (P)2010 Random House

Critic reviews

“Peter Straub's...novel is a terrifying story of innocents - high school students in the turbulent 60s - who stumble into horrors far beyond their understanding. A Dark Matter is populated with vivid, sympathetic characters, and driven by terrors both human and supernatural. It’s the kind of book that’s impossible to put down once it has been picked up. It kept me reading far into the night. Straub builds otherworldly terror without ever losing touch with his attractive cast of youngsters, who age beautifully. Put this one high on your list.” (Stephen King)

"Part Rashomon, part The Turn of the Screw. Peter Straub may well be the most important voice in suspense fiction today." (Lincoln Child)

"American master Peter Straub takes the sweep of our freaky history over the past forty years, subjects it to all the elegant gifts of madness and arts of haunting of which he is the wicked king, and finds himself in possession of a masterpiece." (Michael Chabon, author of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union and Manhood for Amateurs)

Amazing every time!!!

This is my 5th time reading this book and there is just so much its hard to just take in in one reading. But the truth is the small details. This experience shared between friends of a dark matter delves into this wild occult ritual that binds the friends through. its overwhelming how out this world it all seems but so realistic as if this were a true story. Its alot on the mind but i can nver get enough and every read answer mkre questions that i didnt think were there. its all in the small details.

Should have quit after Ghost Story

I am finally giving up on Peter Straub. After reading "Ghost Story," I thought that he was the next best thing to Stephen King. Alas, nothing he has written since comes close to GS, and much of it, like "A Dark Matter" is almost unreadable. It did not take long before I did not care about the characters or how the story would end. One can suspend disbelief only so far, and the author takes us about a light year beyond that point in this book. It is amusing that the nickname of one of the book's charactor's is Dil and that at one point he and the main character try to remember the name of the author of "To Kill a Mockingbird." Mr. Straub should have taken Harper Lee's cue and quit after his first masterpiece.

Beautifully-written cosmic horror

Until “A Dark Matter,” the only Straub novels I had read were the ones co-written with Stephen King (they are excellent). I found out about this novel from the podcast “The Horror Show with Brian Keene.”

I read the negative reviews, but since I trust the opinions of the show’s hosts I gave it a shot — and I’m so glad I did!

The book is essentially about a man trying to solve a 40 year old mystery: what happened during an occult ritual where an acquaintance was killed. His wife was present, but for decades had refused to untie the knot of the past.

I think the negative reviews mostly come from people who prefer fairly linear stories. This book, in the tradition of cosmic horror, spends a lot of time in the past. The narrator is constantly looking back, piecing together his friends’ recollections. I think some readers weren’t into that; however, *I* loved it.

If you like mysteries, if you like a narrator who isn’t omniscient, if you like cosmic horror... if that small divine spark within us both awes and terrifies you... then this is a book you should definitely listen to!

Tough to get through.

The first Straub book I read was Shadowland way back when. The first 100 or so pages were a challenge to get through but once you got to Shadowland the book really took off making it a great read. I was hoping for the same thing after struggling through the first few hours of "A Dark Matter". No such luck, uninspired narration and frankly a wandering and boring storyline with no real payoff and that is being generous. Pretty much a waste of a credit in my opinion. Don't bother.

A huge miss

I'm finally done with Straub, his books have just gotten worse, not better, this one I couldn't even finish. Unfortunately the narration for this one was mediocre so didn't help, but the story is relentlessly boring.

You have to work at it...

This one is taking a long time to warm up. In all fairness I am not continuing past chapter 3.
I can't be sure if the negative is the writing or the narrator but 2.5 hours in and I'm still confused by who's who and rerunning sections of book cause I realize I've gotten distracted and missed something. Too bad - it really seems like something might be there but I have lost my struggle and am moving on.

A New Vision of Hell

After suffering through Peter Straub's "A Dark Matter" I discovered an entirely new idea of what hell must be like. It must be like sitting in the coach section of an American Airlines 767 with Peter Straub seated at the front of that section reading aloud from "A Dark Matter." I can think of absolutely nothing more horrifying. The ineptitude of his prose, the relenteless silliness of his images and descriptions, the brainlessness of his "characters" as Straub's words wander aimlessly over the page in search of a plot. If this was a 7th grade writing exercise, the teacher would ask the child to throw it out and start over. And to think that only one month ago I concluded no one could tell a dumber story with greater ineptitude or more hollow pretense than little John Irving in "Last Night in Twisted River," when along comes Straub to prove me dead wrong. This book is not nearly as frightening or as fun as Mr. Toad's Wild Ride in Disneyland. And what is most frightening about it is its determination to continue on and on and on with neither plot or purpose as if the author was paid only by the word. The horror, the horror.

A Dull Matter

I can't add much to what's already been written about this boring waste of time and money. I, like another reviewer thought at one time that Mr. Straub was destined to become the next Stephen King, this dreadful effort has finally put that possibility to rest.

A BORING Matter

Being a fan of Peter Straub since his Ghost Story days, I was verry disappointed with A Dark Matter. It is a boring story made worse by a dull uninspiring narrator whose voice and diction are out place with the story line which is essentially a 60's mind bender.

Incomprehensible hype

One wonders why the likes of Lorrie Moore and Michael Chabon are championing this book, which Chabon goes so far as to call a masterpiece. I'm guessing that Moore and Straub are colleagues at UW-Madison; and, as a college professor myself, I can imagine that Moore might have felt she had no other choice.

The characters are poorly developed; one doesn't believe in any of them, let alone care about what happens to them. The plot, such as it is, is propelled along by the author's magical intervention. We learn what each middle-aged character saw "in the meadow" 40 years ago, and the answer is: different kinds of meaningless, even embarrassing, hocus-pocus. Nothing that we learn is even remotely scary, though much of it is laughable (e.g., the devil who shows up dressed in preppy clothes and speaking in a "New York" accent -- an especially painful stretch of poor Robertson Dean's somniferous narration -- whose name is "Doity Thoid" (get it? 33rd? hahaha!)).

What propelled me to the end was curiosity about how Straub might get himself out of the boring mess he was creating. The answer is: he doesn't. Ouch.