The Hollow Places: A Novel

This was an amazingly, delightfully creepy book! The older I get, the less I seem to enjoy horror books, especially the gore and guts kind of horror. I still enjoy the atmospheric, psychological horror, but I find it hard to find good book that don't repeat the same tired clichés or manage to completely botch the ending. I'm glad I picked up The Hollow Places, because this book delivered. I think the best part about it is how slowly it develops the creep factor. We start in this wonderful little museum of improbable and impossible things that might look scary and unusual, but are, most of them fake. And our protagonist is someone who grew up in that museum. Who knows every nook and cranny of that building, who played among the display cases and hugged the stuffed animals as if they were her childhood friends. To Kara, or "Carrot" how her family and friends call her, the museum is the safest place on earth. This is a refuge when her family life is shattered by a divorce. A chance to regroup and start over. And the author takes time to set the stage and introduce us to Kara and her uncle, as well as the museum itself. It's done in such a way that as a reader, I was in love with the little building as well. I was feeling warm and safe there. So when creepy and unexplained things start happen in this safe place, it completely knocks the ground from under your feet along with the protagonist. The horror of what's happening has an even bigger impact because it is intruding into this safe zone. The author also introduces the horrors of the Willows very progressively. At first, it just looks like a slightly creepy, but ultimately benign world. Yes, it's flooded. Yes, there are bunkers everywhere, but no people. Yes, the willows are strange, but they are just trees, right? As more an more bizarre things happen to our protagonists, as the level of horror slowly ramps up, so did my blood pressure. I felt for them. I felt with them, especially after the school bus and their realization that they lost their bunker, and that they are possibly stuck in this weird no-man's land forever. I loved Kara. She is funny, she is a mess, but she is so relatable. Maybe because I've been in her shoes, with a messy divorce and a husband that acted exactly the same way. Yes, Carrot was slightly too stupid to live when it came to one particular object, but I can let it slide, because I liked everything else about her. And Simon! If I had to get lost in a weird in-between place of existence with somebody, he would be my first choice. He is cool under pressure, and funny, and also relatable. And special shoutout to Beau, the bestest, most adorable cranky cat in literature. As I mentioned, the horror in this slowly builds up and finds its culmination when the safe place suddenly becomes unsafe. Unlike other horror books I've read recently, the author didn't drop the ball here. The resolution is satisfying and the ending is everything I wanted it to be. And even though our protagonist win in the end, they are left with physical and emotional scars, which is also very logical and realistic. All in all, this was a very enjoyable book. I will definitely recommend it to my friends and I will check out other books by this author. Heck, I already told my husband he absolutely needs to read it.

This was well written, witty, funny, and, at times, down right terrifying! Portals to another world that was very unique and fascinating and dreadful. Satisfying read.

It was hard to decide how to rate this novel. On the one hand, it's a wonderfully creepy story of the old-school kind, where the scariest things are the ones you can't see. On the other hand, it drags on for a frustratingly long time. The main characters' escape from the willow world takes a long enough time that it seems likely they won't escape until the end (but they do), and then it takes another really long time for them to solve the problem of the wormhole. Something about that pacing feels off. Still, this book would have merited four stars, if not for issues that swirl around mostly outside the actual story. One is the fact that this novel is basically a sequel to "The Willows," not merely inspired by a quotation or concept from it. Given that the original story is no longer in copyright, it's not a problem to write fan-fiction, but it would be more ethical to admit it outright. (I found it ironic that the main character frequently referenced her fan-fic hobby.) Another issue is the hatred that seems to periodically overflow from the author. For example, she jumped instantly to the conclusion that Lovecraft could only have found "The Willows" creepy if it had a non-white character (it doesn't). Unlike others of Kingfisher's contemporary narrators, Carrot doesn't constantly virtue-signal, but it seems as if the author herself could not resist the compulsion to make sure that everyone knows that she has *never for one moment* thought that Lovecraft was anything but a horrible human being. And every once in while, a burning hatred of "deplorables" pops up briefly in the text, like a willow root pushing through a thin boundary. I'm very glad that this is the last of Kingfisher's contemporary novels that I purchased (before reading "A House With Good Bones" and deciding that, while I adore her fantasy novels, I find the contemporary ones obnoxious).

This book was riveting, it got to a point it was so creepy, so weird and unnerving that I needed to stop reading. But I couldn't it's just too good. I read it far too quickly. This was an amazing story. It reminds me of the weirdness of Jeff Vandermeer. Every now and then you read something wonderful that you won't forget.

Genauer gesagt hatte ich erste Anzeichen leichten Unbehagens bei der Erwähnung von Flüssen, Booten auf Flüssen, Inseln in besagten Flüssen, Weiden auf besagten Inseln in besagten Flüssen, und eben Ottern - den großen Exemplaren, die an die zwei Meter lang werden und schon mal mit einem im Wasser treibenden Menschen verwechselt werden können, schon bevor ich "The Hollow Places" gelesen habe. Denn einige Wochen, bevor ich endlich T. Kingfisher für mich entdeckte, las ich Algernon Blackwoods "The Willows" (Die Weiden), und musste hinterher feststellen, dass mir das Buch ein nicht näher zu definierendes, jedoch umso nachhaltigeres Unbehagen beschert hatte. Wundervoll. Als ich dann einen Blick darauf warf, warum es in "The Hollow Places" geht, fiel dieser Blick eigentlich nur auf das Wort "willows", was sofort eine Trigger-Wirkung hatte. Hatte die Autorin etwa... Ja, sie hat. T. Kingfisher hat sich Algernon Blackwoods Geschichte genommen, bzw. sich Grundzüge daraus beherzt geliehen, und in einen ebenso atemberaubenden wie atmosphärischen Roman eingewoben, der deutlich die Handschrift einer Autorin trägt, von der ich in Zukunft bitte jedes Buch für das erwachsene Lesepublikum haben möchte (T. Kingfisher schreibt unter einem anderen, ihrem eigentlichen Namen, auch Kinderbücher) und gleichzeitig für diejenigen Leser, die Blackwoods Geschichte kennen, jede Menge Aha-Momente bereithält. Man muss das Original, also "The Willows", nicht kennen, um trotzdem ein riesiges Vergnügen an "The Hollow Places" zu haben, aber schaden kann es nicht. Es handelt sich dabei, das ist vielleicht wichtig für Leser, die auf Gemetzel und jede Menge Blut stehen, nicht um eine Horrorgeschichte, jedenfalls nicht, wenn man Horror mit den vorgenannten Zutaten verbindet, sondern um "speculative fiction", in der das Grauen subtiler aufgebaut wird. Und auch "The Hollow Places" ist kein Horror-Schocker, wenn auch T. Kingfisher die ein oder andere Szene zu bieten hat, die man besser nicht vor dem Essen zu sich nimmt (und auch nicht unmittelbar danach). Es ist aber auch, zum Glück, auch sonst völig anders als Blackwood. Denn anders als der genannte Herr hat T. Kingfisher nämlich hat etwas, was dem zumindest in seinen Geschichten völlig fehlte: sie hat Humor und ein Herz für ihre Protagonisten, und das macht den ganz, ganz großen Charme von "The Hollow Places" aus. Die Protagonistin "Carrot" und ihr schwuler Freund Simon sind zwei, die man unbedingt kennnenlernen möchte - vorzugsweise im Kuriositätenmuseum von Carrots Onkel und lieber nicht auf der anderen Seite von dessen Außenwänden. Immer wieder bricht man während des Lesens ganz unvermittelt in hysterisches Gekicher aus, genau wie die Protagonisten, denen als Reaktion auf den Irrsinn, der sie ebenso unvermittelt heimsucht, gar nichts anderes übrigbleibt, wenn sie nicht den Verstand verlieren wollen. Und es ist wie gesagt, trotz allem und jedem ein einziges Vergnügen, mit den beiden die "Hollow Places" zu erkunden, auch wenn einem, sollte man nicht gerade nervös kichern, schon mal die Kinnlade in die Knie fällt. Spätestens beim Otter, um das mal abzurunden, war das bei mir der Fall. Jetzt warte ich sehnsüchtig auf "A House with Good Bones", T. Kingfishers neuen Roman, in einer Ausgabe, die ich mir leisten kann. Und darauf, dass irgendein Verlag mal bitte auf die Idee kommt, nicht nur die YA-Bücher dieser Autorin (jaja, die gibt es auch noch) ins Deutsche zu übersetzen, sondern eben auch ihre, nennen wir es dann doch eben so, subtil-humanen Horror-Romane.

This book scared me so badly I had to take breaks to calm down. At one stage I was so freaked out that when I got a start from one line that I physically threw the kindle across the bed. Kingfisher (Ursula) is very, very good at writing a horror story where the characters are as smart as the reader - which makes it much harder hitting when they do what you would do in their shoes... I love horror, and I am by no means a wimp! This book scared me more than anything in years, and I enjoyed it immensely.

The story wasn't too good, but a book is always a nice gift.

I loved it. Both funny and terrifying. I'll be getting more from Ursula Vernon.