NOS4A2

A Novel

De: Joe Hill

Narrado por: Kate Mulgrew

The spine-tingling, bone-chilling　novel of supernatural suspense from the #1　New York Times　bestselling author of　The Fireman　and　Horns—now an AMC original series starring Zachary Quinto, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Ashleigh Cummings.

""A masterwork of horror.""—　Time

Victoria McQueen has an uncanny knack for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. When she rides her bicycle over the rickety old covered bridge in the woods near her house, she always emerges in the places she needs to be.

Charles Talent Manx has a gift of his own. He likes to take children for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the vanity plate NOS4A2. In the Wraith, he and his innocent guests can slip out of the everyday world and onto hidden roads that lead to an astonishing playground of amusements he calls Christmasland. The journey across the highway of Charlie's twisted imagination transforms his precious passengers, leaving them as terrifying and unstoppable as their benefactor.

Then comes the day when Vic goes looking for trouble...and finds her way to Charlie. That was a lifetime ago. Now, the only kid ever to escape Charlie's evil is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx hasn't stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. On the road again, he won't slow down until he's taken his revenge. He's after something very special—something Vic can never replace.

As a life-and-death battle of wills builds, Vic McQueen prepares to destroy Charlie once and for all—or die trying.

JH isn't there yet

Like others I tried this because of who his father is. He clearly is his father's son and I hope like his father his books are mostly hit with the occasional miss. To me this was a miss. I am one of the few who really enjoyed the narrator, I just didn't care for the story. I couldn't relate with the protagonist and just didn't care for her at all. I had a hard time staying focused which made the story even more convoluted. I felt like the magical and mystical moments were just too plentiful and the real horror wasn't there.

Unengaging Story, Bravura Narration

I've forced myself to continue listening to NOS4A2 to the halfway mark and this morning, when I simply couldn't stand the thought of donning headphones wondered "why?".

Why would I continue listening to a story that has nothing to offer the reader? The characters are utterly unengaging, to the point that I could not care less what happens to them next and the story itself is relentlessly dismal and spun out. While I'm leaving this one, I won't write author Joe Hill off- he can REALLY write, bringing scenes and ideas to life as few writers can.

The answer to the question 'why?" lies with Kate Mulgrew's bravura, daring, scenery chewing performance of Hill's words. I've never heard anything like it and although I'm not certain I want to again, in this instance it is a magnificent, outrageous, dialog chomping, scene stomping one woman show.

Do I recommend it? You decide: the audiobook of NOS4A2 is a not-to-be-missed performance of a story in need of serious editing and (as another reviewer wrote) a little heart.

I don't know

The narrator is simply spectacular. I have listened to a couple of her readings before and get lost in the story. Honestly, I love how she reads longer books.
I would only use credits to get this book and that's if you can't find anything else.

The creepiest child-stealer since Pennywise

Joe Hill, for those unaware, is the son of Stephen King. He's become a well-regarded horror author in his own right, but having been a Constant Reader since high school, I was reluctant to tread into the works of King's kid. Is Joe Smith just imitating his dad, with books that are "King-lite" that got published because of his old man?

Based on NOS4A2 I am pleased to say no, Hill has talent of his own. Now, I never was able to completely shake the feeling of "King-lite." Unquestionably, he has been heavily influenced by his father. The plot, the tropes, the flawed, messed up characters who do messed up things, and the icky weirdness surrounding psychic abilities make it clear that Joe has read all his father's works and taken them as his template for how to write fiction. But who can blame him? If your father is one of the most successful authors in the world, why wouldn't you take him as an example of how it should be done?

So, if you're a King fan, I think you will like this book, but it's good enough to possibly turn you into a Joe Hill fan as well. Certainly, I'm going to read some more by junior.

The villain of the book is Charles Talent (hah!) Manx, who is a sort of psychic vampire. He even put a NOS4A2 vanity plate on his 1938 Rollys-Royce Wraith. Despite this wink at his true nature, what makes Manx interesting, the thing that the heroine, Victoria McQueen realizes in the end, is that like most villains, Manx does not see himself as a villain. Despite being the creepiest child-abducting monster this side of Pennywise, Charles Manx genuinely believe he's doing the children he steals a favor, by taking them away from abusive homes (his definition of "abuse" is of course very broad, since he's a misogynistic troglodyte who thinks pretty much all women are whores and sluts who will pimp out their own children) and bringing them to Christmasland, his own private psychic virtual world in which every day is Christmas, candy and toy shops are open all day and all night, the world is an amusement park, and the children brought there slowly turn into amoral little psychopaths like Charles Manx.

Victoria "Vic" McQueen first encounters Charles Manx as a child. She has a psychic power similar to his - when she rides her bicycle across the Shorter Way Bridge, a rickety, decrepit old bridge near her home town, she can go anywhere. She has a talent for finding lost things, and so on her bike she is able to ride her way to missing jewelry, missing pets, or wherever else she wants to go, and then back home again.

As a teenager, she rides her way into the path of Charles Manx, and while she escapes, the encounter messes her up for life. Years later, with a common law husband who's a sweet, morbidly obese uber-nerd and a son she hasn't seen much of because of all the time she's spent in mental institutions and rehab, she has somehow become a successful children's book author, but she's still a hot mess and a pretty terrible partner and mother. And then Charles Manx comes for her son.

Joe Hill works out the "mechanics" of Vic and Manx's powers (and those of a few others who are mentioned), but in the same manner as King, never rigorously defines them, leaving things mysterious and vague at the edges. Their powers might as well be magic, though they clearly affect the real world, in ways that even non-psychics can perceive.

Vic's boyfriend and the father of her child, Lou Carmody, is a bit of a nerd dream. You can tell Joe Hill is poking loving fun at the sort of 300-pound convention-going, Stormtrooper costume wearing-dork for which Lou is an archetype (he names his son "Bruce Wayne Carmody"!), and it never really feels mean, even if Lou being "rewarded" with the hot girl he rescued one afternoon as a young man really seems like an unlikely bit of wish-fulfillment fantasy. But by the climax, both Lou and Vic get to be the heroes that Lou always wanted to be and that Vic always needed to be.

This is a horror story, but it's also an adventure story, and it's also an epic about a damaged girl who grew up to be a damaged woman, who rides out to do battle with the Devil for the soul of her child. 4 stars, but Joe Hill seems worthy of picking up his father's mantle.

a true joy

if you don't love this book, I worry about you. so many joyful references and visualizations. I may get the paper book as well.