The Amulet

By: Michael McDowell

Narrated by: Julia Whelan

Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins

Publisher's Summary

When a rifle range accident leaves Dean Howell disfigured and in a vegetative state, his wife Sarah finds her dreary life in Pine Cone, Alabama made even worse. After long and tedious days on the assembly line, she returns home to care for her corpse-like husband while enduring her loathsome and hateful mother-in-law, Jo. Jo blames the entire town for her son's mishap, and when she gives a strange piece of jewelry to the man she believes most responsible, a series of gruesome deaths is set in motion. Sarah believes the amulet has something to do with the rising body count, but no one will believe her. As the inexplicable murders continue, Sarah and her friend Becca Blair have no choice but to track down the amulet themselves, before it's too late...

Michael McDowell (1950-1999) is best known for his screenplays to the films Beetlejuice and The Nightmare Before Christmas, but he was also the author of several excellent and underrated Southern Gothic horror novels, of which The Amulet (1979) was the first. Originally published as a pulp paperback, now scarce and long out-of-print, McDowell's grimly humorous and delightfully horrific novel returns in this edition, which features a new introduction by Poppy Z. Brite.

©1979, 2016 Michael McDowell (P)2017 Valancourt Books

Another gem from Michael McDowell

Great narrator for an over the top Southern Gothic horror story. Just when you think you can't have anymore fun, it kicks up another gear.

Wasn't Disappointed

It was paced rather well. Just when you started getting bored with all the talking and mundane happenings it switched back to the supernatural happenings. Did get kinda gorey.

All McDowell is good!

I believe this was McDowell's first novel of southern gothic horror, a genre that this man did better than anyone else. This is probably McDowell at his trashiest and most violent. The story revolves around an amulet that's passed around to various people in the small town of Pine Cone, Alabama. As you can imagine, anyone who possesses the amulet gets killed in some horrifying fashion, and the deaths get more violent and more ridiculous as the book progresses. It's not quite as refined as it would be in his next few works, but McDowell also introduces the bickering southern families that would become a staple of his work. The relationship between Sarah Howell and her angry, mean-spirited, manipulative mother-in-law Jo Howell (you will love to hate her) really sets the stage for his next few books, all of which are even better than this one even if some of them aren't quite as fun. This is like one of your favorite horror B-movies in novel form. Check this one out!

🏆🎧 ABR Reviewer's Choice Award Winner

After being wounded in a military training exercise, Dean Howell returns home to his wife and mother in a vegetative state, his face hidden behind layers of bandages. While Sarah administers to his treatment, in addition to working full-time at the local munitions factory (the same factory that built the rifle that exploded in Dean's face), his bitter, resentful, and domineering mother, Jo, plots revenge. Jo blames the entire town of Pine Cone, Alabama for her son's debilitating injuries and sets into motion a series of extraordinary murders. The titular amulet, a cursed (or, perhaps, possessed) item gifted by Jo to the man who failed to hire Dean into the factory and save him from being drafted into the Vietnam War, is the only thing connecting the otherwise unrelated and inexplicable deaths. As the bodies begin to pile up, Sarah realizes the amulet lays at the center of it all, and she must find it before any more killings can occur.

Originally published in 1979, Valancourt Books reprinted The Amulet for a new generation of readers a few years ago, and this past August released this audiobook edition narrated by Audie Award winner Julia Whelan. Whelan does an excellent job bringing Michael McDowell's material to life, giving dialogue a soft and welcoming Southern lilt. Her reading of McDowell's wonderful writing held me in rapt attention the whole way through, and this is a top-notch production all around.

McDowell is an author that has been on my radar for a while now, thanks largely to Charlene at Char's Horror Corner, who has positively reviewed a number of the author's works as resurrected by Valancourt Books. Huge props, too, to Valancourt, because now that I've read McDowell for myself I will most certainly be reading as many more of his works as I can get my hands on.

Despite being set during the late 1960s, The Amulet is far from anachronistic. I've read plenty of 80s novels that felt far more dated than McDowell's (even Robert Marasco's Burnt Offerings, published only a few years prior to this book, felt far old than its original 1973 pub date), and thanks to the human factors at play here -- the family drama, friendships, and racial tensions between the white and black sections of Pine Cone -- The Amulet feels just as relevant in 2018 regardless of its nearly forty-year -old history. McDowell has an ear for dialogue, and the Alabama-born author successfully captures the regional patois and atmosphere of the region. His characters are believable, each of them inhabiting their own lives within these pages, and we're given just enough detail to care about them before they're yanked away from us. None of Pine Cone's residents are safe (not even the children, and there are several child deaths depicted throughout, so fair warning), and the diabolical piece of jewelry is a sort of traveling gun drawing them all toward danger. The body count here is significant, and McDowell does not pull any punches as he dispatches entire families, friends, and neighbors in delightfully creative and gruesome ways. In fact, I suspect the Final Destination film franchise owes a large debt, and a number of thanks, to this particular novel.

The Amulet is a wonderful and engrossing work of quiet, small-town horror, and McDowell does an incredible job building this story, ratcheting up the tension and taking us from one twisted murder to another as we follow this cursed object across Pine Cone and into the lives of those unfortunate enough to claim the strange necklace as their own. As his first published novel, The Amulet is an excellent introduction to McDowell's work for newcomers such as myself. I can promise you now it certainly will not be my last, and I'm already debating which Michael McDowell book I should dive into next.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog.

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Guilty pleasure

I enjoyed this book in the same guilty way I enjoy looking at a totally destroyed car after a bad wreck. It could be considered too formulaic by some but it kept me going and I wasn’t sure how it would end. In that respect, it was good horror. Good characters.

A fresh hell

This was a different kind of horror story. It was well crafted, the story felt fresh, and the elements of setting & character were given the kind of attention that makes me feel like I've stepped through a dark looking glass, not a hastily bent funhouse mirror. The narrator gave those well fleshed characters good voices for their place, time & impending tragic demise. Don't get fond of anybody, just saying.

Amazing performance by Julia Whelan

One of the most compelling stories I've heard in years. Narrator should win an award.

Just as good 38 years later.

You probably have never heard of Michael McDowell, he died at a really young age. But if you're a fan of the film Beetlejuice, then you know his work. Out of print for nearly 30 years, his first novel is a masterwork of a field he created: Southern Gothic horror. without him, they'd be no Suki Stackhouse.

Good plotline, lacking in descriptiveness.

The storyline was good, the characters were interesting, but the writing was very cut and dried, lacking imagery.
As the plot drew to its conclusion the storyline failed as well.
It was interesting enough to listen to, bit lacked some depth and intricacy.

Grisly and Enthralling

There are at least two kinds of horror stories. One is "there are monsters and we will kill them," and the other is "there are monsters and we must suffer them." The Amulet falls into the latter category. It is Horror in the sense that the characters are doomed by something beyond their ken AND by their own faults and foibles. They can't escape because, in part they can't escape themselves, and the evil they face plays on that.

McDowell as usual paints a vivid picture of a Southern community. This one is set in the earlier days of the Vietnam war and the Civil Rights movement. McDowell's fictional town of Pine Cone, Alabama is full of poverty, gossip, mistrust, old grudges, fear, alienation, racism, and decay.

The central conceit is that malignant yet lazy antagonist Jo Howell is going to take revenge on the town that built the rifle that malfunctioned, exploded, and disfigured her son Dean. Her weapon is the Amulet that turns regular people into murderers before bringing its wearer to his or her own grisly end. The novel is told from the perspective of Dean's wife, Sarah. So much of the horror of the novel comes from the strain that builds on Sarah: taking care of her invalid husband, dealing with her lazy but demanding mother in law, working a monotonous job at the rifle factory, and trying to keep her sanity as she learns of the terror her mother in law has let loose on the community of Pine Cone.

Jo Howell is painted wonderfully as a malignant narcissist who feels everyone owes her something but is too lazy to even take care of herself. The long-suffering Sarah is well drawn as well, as is her closest friend and neighbor, Becca. This novel has the horror of formula described at the outset of this review down pat in that the reader can really feel how Sarah and Becca suffer emotionally from the evil around them.

I've found that McDowell's books stick with me because they aren't interested in tying things off in a nice, neat, hopeful ending. Horror endures and threatens to repeat itself, which is part of what makes it such an effective genre for storytelling. And the horror of The Amulet one that will stick with you for some time after you finish reading.

Julia Whelan does a great job with the narration. I've sampled her narration in one or two other audio-books, but she didn't make much of an impression on me. But with The Amulet her performance is distinctive and it resonates well with the material. I would listen to more from her based on this presentation.

Not McDowell's best novel

I'm a huge McDowell fan but this novel was very disappointing compared to his other vworks: formulaic, repetitive and thin on plot. It started well but then missed many opportunities to be a great book. Another writer could massively improve this with a re-write.

Disappointing

Started off okay but the killings become more sillier as the story went on. Unsatisfactory ending also.

Freezer worthy

This was a fun, but very creepy and stomach turning read. Expertly narrated. There's quite a few female characters in this book and all of them had a distinctive voice and personality. Amazing.

Great

Great stuff
Really enjoyed his work
The elementals is even better imho
Give it a go

Wonderfully wicked.

Absolutely brilliant tale. McDowell never failed to deliver compelling characters and riveting plots. If you’re after a quick but thrilling read you can’t go wrong with this.

Powerful

What a gem. Mind the obvious pun. I had read another book of the author called Blackwater. Just as exciting and mysterious. A great read