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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Typical John Saul--too typical, 28 Nov 2002
Saul's The Right Hand of Evil left me rather unmoved. It's a fairly enjoyable read, but it cannot be called highly original, scary, or awe-inspiring. This is pretty typical John Saul. A dysfunctional family of five-an alcoholic father, rather weak mother, a pair of adolescent twins, and an infant-faces desperation when Ted loses yet another job as a hotel assistant manager due to his drinking. Then comes a call that Ted's aunt, shut up in a sanitarium for decades, is dying. Suddenly, the family inherits a large, old house which Ted decides to make into an inn with the money left to him by an aunt he cared nothing about. Of course, trouble begins brewing immediately. The close-knit townspeople of St. Albans do not want anyone living in that evil house, abandoned for forty years-especially not another Conway. Conways in that house have always meant big, big trouble for the town; stories of murder and evil surround the old house, as do hidden eyes watching and biding their time. Hated and shunned by the whole community, her husband drinking more heavily than ever, Janet decides to take her children and finally leave. Miraculously, though, she finds that her husband Ted seems to have finally changed completely and given up alcohol. For the first time, the family begins to enjoy a normal life of sorts, but burgeoning happiness soon recedes back into terror as Jared, the first-born son begins to change, seemingly taking on all of the bad qualities his father has just overcome. There's a story behind the history of the house, of course, one going back over a century (no surprise here; the whole ancient curse theme is Saul's trademark plot point). We gradually learn exactly what has taken place in the house, but this particular puzzle has few pieces missing to begin with. The tenor of things to come is never really in doubt, although I have no real criticism of the conclusion, which Saul pulled off fairly well. Saul goes all the way this time to give us the ultimate Evil, but his efforts were not quite up to the lofty challenge. There are some suspenseful moments, but Saul replays them often enough to make them rather banal in the end. Character development is rather interesting, particularly in terms of the Catholic priests. My impressions of the priests were made to change a little too quickly and easily, prompting me to wonder just when it had happened. As for the Conway family, I liked daughter Kim, but I could hardly have cared less about the others, particularly Ted and Jared. Since I didn't invest a lot of interest in Saul's characters, I never really cared how the novel might end. There are a few scenes that are sure to bother animal lovers such as myself, so I want to mention that fact here. I always cringe when I see an animal in a Saul novel because animals rarely fare too well in this writer's narratives. Ultimately, I will say that this novel is just a little too derivative of Saul's other fiction, and this time around there is no real zing that certain other of his narratives have. If you've never read John Saul before, you will probably enjoy this novel a lot more than those of us are familiar with his work. John Saul is a talented writer who knows how to tell a story well, and that counts for a lot, but this novel, which aspires to much, falls short of its mark and never really sinks its claws into the heart and mind of the reader.
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