Off Season

By: Jack Ketchum

Narrated by: Richard Davidson

Length: 7 hrs and 50 mins

Publisher's summary

September. A beautiful New York editor retreats to a lonely cabin on a hill in the quiet Maine beach town of Dead River - off season - awaiting her sister and friends. Nearby, a savage human family with a taste for flesh lurks in the darkening woods, watching, waiting for the moon to rise and night to fall.

And before too many hours pass, five civilized, sophisticated people and one tired old country sheriff will learn just how primitive we all are beneath the surface...and that there are no limits at all to the will to survive.

©1981 Jack Ketchum (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"If you read Off Season on Thanksgiving, you probably won't sleep until Christmas." (Stephen King)

100 Must-Read Thrillers (International Thriller Writers)

Mediocre at Best

I temper my judgement of this book for two reasons:
1. He wrote it 30 years ago, so it's unfair to compare the many books that did what he tried better since then, and
2. He was simply trying to write pulp slasher fiction and didn't care about character development and can't be judged too harshly for not doing it.

The author thinks he wrote an explicit novel, but there are 1960's novels that were more explicit (Rogue Roman comes to mind). You can't hinge the success of a novel on shock, but that's what Ketchum tried to do here.

To make explicit violence work properly, you need to pair it with beauty. Ketchum doesn't build up beauty at all, so the violence is simply boring.

Finally, the book is narrated as if by a parody of Captain Kirk. I kept forgetting to listen to the novel and imagined William Shatner reading the phone book as if it were the end of the universe. Every little thing is narrated like it's a shocker, and I mean everything no matter how trivial. There's no nuance at all, no finesse. But that may be the producer's fault and not the narrator. They may have told him to do it.

When I think of fun pulp books I listened to like "Infected" or smart explicit books like "Meat" or "Kafka on the Shore" it's hard to feel like I got any value hearing Off Season, but then those books are more mature.

good book, would avoid narrator

the book is typical to any kind of cannibal story one might already be familiar with in the 21st century, but as an 80s cannibal story the main crew of characters were quite likeable and I enjoyed Ketchum's writing style.

unfortunately, Richard Davidson's character voice decisions sometimes became obnoxious(particularly with woman characters) and downright confusing (when differentiating between older male characters) and I think I might've enjoyed it better if he had decided to do less voice acting. the last thing you want when LISTENING to a book is to be taken out of it by the narrator himself.

would recommend for horror fans, but maybe skip the audio book.

Sublime Narration

The narrator really brought out this title. The best treatment I could have hoped for.

awesome book!

Loved it! Was so wonderfully written and kept me interested! Kinda graphic but that didn't both me.

Aw man! Lol.

This was what I was expecting, lol, in “that” way we all know of Ketchum but it turned out to be so much more! This story was told by a master storyteller! It’s so much more than gruesome scenes. It was a really adventurous story that had me from the beginning. He tells the story in such a perfect, REAL way without ridiculous scenes that you need to ignore in order to keep moving on. It’s very real life and told the way things would actually go down. Great book. Great story. Great fun.

The utterly atrocious narration ruined it.

I wasn't able to make it past the middle of the story. While I really wanted to know what happened, the narration was so awful I couldn't stand to listen a moment longer. Terrible voices and accents. How has he done so many books? In future, I will make sure I avoid any title with this narrator.

The 1980s were a long time ago, eh?

Overall, it's an okay story. I didn't realize that 1981 was so long ago but after reading this book and noticing just how much it reads like a "classic", I understand that the 1980s is a whole world ago and what was shocking and revolting then in fiction has been outdone since in real life. I didn't find it particularly gory or disturbing (go read Meat if you want something disturbing) but I'm sure for an 80s audience it must have been.

The women are beyond useless and the "bad guys" are beyond believable, and if I lived in Maine I'd be offended at how "hillbilly-y" Ketchum portrays the locals, but it's fast and nicely paced and you might still find yourself wondering how it'll turn out in the end, even if you might not care about any of the characters enough to hope for their survival.

But, for a fast and gory - albeit somewhat dated - horror book, it's decent enough. I don't think I'll read more of Ketchum though as it's really more like Shock-Horror than Terror-Horror which is what I prefer when I read horror books. Oh, and there's no subtlety as to what's going on, or what will happen in the end.

The narration is okay. He's not the most animated narrator I've heard, but he doesn't hurt the story any.

Great Read

Didn't expect this! Exciting and different. Not familiar with the author but want to read more. Story is just enough to feel for the characters without being bored.

Disappointing

While Ketchum's story is entertaining in a "guilty pleasure" sort of way, it would require a far better narrator than Richard Davidson to make it acceptable as an audio book. The story and prose are crude and require a more skilled narration than is provided to make it work. I gave up on it about one third of the way through. Not recommended.

Creepy but Couldn't Stop Listening!!

Any additional comments?

Yes, this book was graphic and creepy and a bit unbelievable but so good and held my attention throughout. Jack Ketchum is an awesome author. I do think I'd be scared to be in his mind 😱
Only negative I have to say is the narrator...it was very distracting to me and took away from the intensity of the character when his accents used for the male detectives sounded like if Colonel Sanders and PopEye had a baby. He made the detective sound like he was a southern 80 year old man but yet each time was a bit different. Then he used another accent for another detective that was just as annoying. I am from the the South but I'm pretty sure these accents are not Maine accents!! But not a deal breaker for getting the book. In fact, I just finished the sequel Offspring. It was better than the first I thought and the narrator was a woman and she is so easy and believable to listen to.