It begins with a door in a dusky corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire. A door that someone has sealed it shut with thirty-nine enormous carriage bolts. The home's new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin daughters. Chip was an an airline pilot until he was forced to crash land on a remote lake the jet he was flying after double engine failure. Thirty-nine people aboard Flight 1611 died that day - a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door ...Meanwhile, his wife is increasingly troubled about the women in this sparsely populated village, self-proclaimed 'herbalists'. Why do they seem excessively interested in her young daughters. Emily is terrified, too, that her husband's grip on sanity seems to have become increasingly tenuous, in the wake of the devastating plane accident.
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Review
'Bohjalian flings himself into a full-blooded romance with the paranormal. In doing so, he earns a place alongside Stephen King ... expertly and, at times, beautifully written, deliciously creepy' --Boston Globe
'Riveting. . .seamless. . .a hell of a good ghost story.' --Justin Cronin, author of The Passage
'A gripping paranormal thriller. . .Meticulous research and keen attention to detail give depth and character to [the] eerie world. . .Bohjalian is a master, and the slow-mounting dread makes this a frightful ride.' --Publishers Weekly
'A page-turner of uncommon depth. Guilt, egotism, and fear all play parts in this genre-bending novel.' --Booklist
'Compelling. . .a practical magick horror story'
--Kirkus Review
'Chris Bohjalian's powerful novel grips like a vice from first to last.' --Sally Cousins, The Sunday Telegraph, November 20, 2011
'From its opening page, Bohjalian's story grabs you like a disembodied hand coming out of a black night and doesn't stop shaking.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like if Stephen King reshaped the folksy stories of Jane Hamilton, this is your book' --The Daily Mail
'Riveting. . .seamless. . .a hell of a good ghost story.' --Justin Cronin, author of The Passage
'A gripping paranormal thriller. . .Meticulous research and keen attention to detail give depth and character to [the] eerie world. . .Bohjalian is a master, and the slow-mounting dread makes this a frightful ride.' --Publishers Weekly
'A page-turner of uncommon depth. Guilt, egotism, and fear all play parts in this genre-bending novel.' --Booklist
'Compelling. . .a practical magick horror story'
--Kirkus Review
'Chris Bohjalian's powerful novel grips like a vice from first to last.' --Sally Cousins, The Sunday Telegraph, November 20, 2011
'From its opening page, Bohjalian's story grabs you like a disembodied hand coming out of a black night and doesn't stop shaking.
If you've ever wondered what it would be like if Stephen King reshaped the folksy stories of Jane Hamilton, this is your book' --The Daily Mail
About the Author
Chris Bohjalian is the critically acclaimed author of 11 novels, including Skeletons at the Feast and his most recent New York Times bestseller, The Double Bind, published by Pocket Books. His work has been translated into eighteen languages and published in twenty-one countries. He lives in Vermont with his wife and daughter.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 19 people found the following review helpful
By JudithAnn
Format:Paperback
A family moves to a small village in New Hampshire after the father, Chip Linton, an airline pilot, crashed his plane causing 39 people to die (and 9 to survive). As he will never be able to fly again, they want to make a new start and buy a big, old house, which he starts doing up.
His wife Emily is now the main provider for the family, who also include ten-year old twin daughters Hallie and Garnet. Chip gets obsessed with a small door in the basement that has been bolted down by 39 (!) bolts.
Meanwhile Emily and the girls are making friends with a group of women in the village that call themselves herbalists and all own greenhouses in which they grow exotic plants.
Both Emily and Hallie find them a little too overpowering and don't quite trust them.
Chip is losing his grip on reality when he starts seeing some of the people that died in the crash who are now demanding dangerous actions from him.
Is Emily right to worry about the lovely old ladies with their biscuits and other bakes? Is Chip losing it completely, or are there really ghosts in the house?
I very much enjoyed this book! That basement door gave me the creeps, and that was right at the beginning of the book. Add a small community with strange women forcing biscuits and other foods on the family and teaching the twins how to use the herbs they grow... All very oppressing and intriguing at the same time.
I liked it that the book was not overly supernatural. Most or all that happened could be explained away without referring to ghosts, magic, or witchcraft. Only near the end, the reader finds out whether "normal" explanations can account for all that happens. In that respect, it different a lot from the book's cover-sake, Her Fearful Symmetry, in
The ending was ... interesting and not quite as I had expected. After thinking about this, the ending was in fact more intriguing than the ending I had been hoping for.
His wife Emily is now the main provider for the family, who also include ten-year old twin daughters Hallie and Garnet. Chip gets obsessed with a small door in the basement that has been bolted down by 39 (!) bolts.
Meanwhile Emily and the girls are making friends with a group of women in the village that call themselves herbalists and all own greenhouses in which they grow exotic plants.
Both Emily and Hallie find them a little too overpowering and don't quite trust them.
Chip is losing his grip on reality when he starts seeing some of the people that died in the crash who are now demanding dangerous actions from him.
Is Emily right to worry about the lovely old ladies with their biscuits and other bakes? Is Chip losing it completely, or are there really ghosts in the house?
I very much enjoyed this book! That basement door gave me the creeps, and that was right at the beginning of the book. Add a small community with strange women forcing biscuits and other foods on the family and teaching the twins how to use the herbs they grow... All very oppressing and intriguing at the same time.
I liked it that the book was not overly supernatural. Most or all that happened could be explained away without referring to ghosts, magic, or witchcraft. Only near the end, the reader finds out whether "normal" explanations can account for all that happens. In that respect, it different a lot from the book's cover-sake, Her Fearful Symmetry, in
The ending was ... interesting and not quite as I had expected. After thinking about this, the ending was in fact more intriguing than the ending I had been hoping for.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Haunted by the memory of crashing his passenger plane into a lake and the resulting death-count including families and children, Chip quits his job and relocates from the city to rural New Hampshire with his wife and twin girls.
Bethel is a small town with some strange inhabitants. The new neighbours are over-friendly and full of gifts - mostly baked ones - and everyone seems to have a greenhouse. It very soon becomes apparent that Bethel is a town divided - there are those townsfolk with flowery names who have greenhouses and are obsessed with botany, and those who have normal names and no greenhouse.
Meanwhile, Chip becomes psychologically and physically haunted by the (depressingly well-described) horrors of his recent trauma and descends into an hallucinatory madness, which sees him alienating himself from, and becoming dangerous to, his own family (a la Jack Torrance in Stephen King's The Shining). The greenhouse ladies run around the rest of the family helping them out and generally making themselves indispensable.
But there's another story parallel to Chip's Jack Torrance syndrome, which involves the greenhouse people themselves and what had transpired in the past within Chip's house before he and his family moved in; and with his wife and children heading towards a ceremony where they'll be soon taking on new names, it becomes clear that it's not just Chip that will be needing help.
The Night Strangers is a genuine page-turner, well paced and competently written. While the subject matter contains a number of very familiar tropes from many a horror tale (particularly the ones involving newcomers arriving in a rural backwater town that harbours a dark secret, crazy locals, or some kind of coven), these minor derivatives are probably its only shortcomings, and I enjoyed the culmination of the various strands of the story which led to a refreshingly almost-unexpected ending.
Bethel is a small town with some strange inhabitants. The new neighbours are over-friendly and full of gifts - mostly baked ones - and everyone seems to have a greenhouse. It very soon becomes apparent that Bethel is a town divided - there are those townsfolk with flowery names who have greenhouses and are obsessed with botany, and those who have normal names and no greenhouse.
Meanwhile, Chip becomes psychologically and physically haunted by the (depressingly well-described) horrors of his recent trauma and descends into an hallucinatory madness, which sees him alienating himself from, and becoming dangerous to, his own family (a la Jack Torrance in Stephen King's The Shining). The greenhouse ladies run around the rest of the family helping them out and generally making themselves indispensable.
But there's another story parallel to Chip's Jack Torrance syndrome, which involves the greenhouse people themselves and what had transpired in the past within Chip's house before he and his family moved in; and with his wife and children heading towards a ceremony where they'll be soon taking on new names, it becomes clear that it's not just Chip that will be needing help.
The Night Strangers is a genuine page-turner, well paced and competently written. While the subject matter contains a number of very familiar tropes from many a horror tale (particularly the ones involving newcomers arriving in a rural backwater town that harbours a dark secret, crazy locals, or some kind of coven), these minor derivatives are probably its only shortcomings, and I enjoyed the culmination of the various strands of the story which led to a refreshingly almost-unexpected ending.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase
The quality of the descriptive writing is what makes this book a compelling read. It's Bohjalian's attempt to emulate The Stepford Wives, with a dash of The Shining thrown in.
I found the pace drags a bit from the centre to the end, which I know doesn't sound promising for a novel that starts with the horror-story hook of a basement door with 39 bolts that coincides with the number of fatalities of a plane which has crashed into a lake. I wouldn't get too enamoured with that door as it's soon clear there aren't going to be any hair standing up on the back of the neck moments, and this turns out not to be a full-blown horror, or even particularly spooky. Instead it's a kind of examination at one remove of the horror genre.
What sticks in my mind in particular are the vivid passages concerning the plane's ditching and the passengers' various deaths, that permeate this novel with a sense of dread. I became involved in the family's struggle to move on from the crash's repercussions, as they head into the even more dangerous waters of a small town of green-fingered women. The neighbourhood posse of Martha Stewarts with their simmering tensions are a brilliant idea to add to the mix. For these reasons I was prepared to forgive the slowness of the pacing, and just enjoy an interesting tall tale.
I found the pace drags a bit from the centre to the end, which I know doesn't sound promising for a novel that starts with the horror-story hook of a basement door with 39 bolts that coincides with the number of fatalities of a plane which has crashed into a lake. I wouldn't get too enamoured with that door as it's soon clear there aren't going to be any hair standing up on the back of the neck moments, and this turns out not to be a full-blown horror, or even particularly spooky. Instead it's a kind of examination at one remove of the horror genre.
What sticks in my mind in particular are the vivid passages concerning the plane's ditching and the passengers' various deaths, that permeate this novel with a sense of dread. I became involved in the family's struggle to move on from the crash's repercussions, as they head into the even more dangerous waters of a small town of green-fingered women. The neighbourhood posse of Martha Stewarts with their simmering tensions are a brilliant idea to add to the mix. For these reasons I was prepared to forgive the slowness of the pacing, and just enjoy an interesting tall tale.
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