"Shadowland" and "Cold Heaven" — The Nature of Disappointment

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Recently, I have been reading two disappointing books, both being praised in the reviews. I will admit that both novels betray the author's exceptional skills. Among these I would emphasise in the first author: excellent descriptions and a knack for keeping scenes in a state of unobtrusive suspense— scenes, I must stress, as the overarching story is not suspenseful in my reading at all — for the reasons explained below. 

I.

I am talking about Peter Straub's Shadowland.

What's wrong with the book can be said in a few words: there is too much straining after effect. Any serious inclination of the reader to identify with the youthful protagonists is drowned and swept away thanks to a relentless avalanche of legerdemainist razzle-dazzle. The three youngsters one might otherwise begin to care for struggle to survive constant harassment by a magician who is contradictorily portrayed as far more capable of magic than an ordinary magician conceivably could be, appearing indeed almost almighty, while at the same time still being restricted in his ability to destroy his victims. 

In its second part, the book becomes just one enervating string of overdrawn conjuring tricks that are lacking in credibility as they refer to effects that a ghost may be able to execute but certainly not a mortal magician. 

I was struggling to get through the thickish book, feeling deceived most of the time. 

What kept me going, apart from discipline, was the descriptive power of Straub's, and his other strength: the masterful evenness of exposition. While the frame is unconvincing, the exposition of each scene is staggeringly realistic, pleasantly economical, and poetically resourceful—worth of great literature. 

But then, the story completely lacks organic coherence. The first part is dedicated to the adventures the two youngster-protagonists experience at a boarding school: an excellent literary report made up of excellent stories. Then, Straub sends the boys off to a summer holiday spent with a magician-relative. In this second part, purpose and theme of the novel change, turning it into a tiring sequence of badly motivated, chronically overdone magical fireworks. The magician is supposed to know that the boys will turn out even more capable magicians than himself, which prospect compels him to try to kill the dreaded competition.

Possibly, Straub was working against a deadline set by his publisher. 

Again the descriptive execution is superb, but the unfolding events are thoroughly unconvincing, not least because Straub simply transfers dazzling stage-effects that would be credible in a truly supernatural environment haunted by properly commissioned ghosts to the world in which we live, overstraining the credulity of the reader and the prowess of a mortal magician with feats of showmanship blatantly beyond the competence of the best tricksters among our species.

The novel is a waste of outstanding talent.

II.

The second novel of disappointment I have finished yesterday: Cold Heaven by Brian Moore. Incidentally, a book recommended by Peter Straub, whose other recommendations turned out to keep the promise.

I had bought the book during my last visit to Ireland in 1995, and have only now come to read it.

Technically Cold Heaven is weaker than Straub's books. The presentation of scenes is often simply unnecessary to begin with, or overly detailed and cluttered with superfluous specifics. This gets tiring after a while, but the flaw never ceases. In building suspense, the author avails himself of specious and dishonest means. The supposedly strictly anti-religious protagonist believes that some religious force is manipulating her like a puppet on a string. What grounds the lady has to think so, is never revealed. In fact, this contradiction has only a inadmissible resolution: the author's need to inject suspense into the book.

The story starts with a recently killed person escaping from a morgue. However, the novel never resolves the exact circumstances, motives and means that enable the fugitive to accomplish this feat. Apparently, the author hopes the reader will have lost interest in this question by the end of the story. Oh yes, the end: having forced myself to read the work of 200 pages to the last line, the conclusion comes over as a big disappointment. The atheistic protagonist feels relieve at the fact that a Catholic priest confirms her right not to share his creed (again that never probed contradiction of a believing unbeliever), and revels in the speculation that the unexplained need previously incumbent on her to act as witness to an apparition (of The Virgin Immaculate) has passed on to a nun. This, unexplicably, liberates the protagonist from being a mere puppet of some vague religious force whose motives and plans are not touched upon in the book.

Again, ultimately, we witness an author that is straining after effect and suspense — with half-baked ad hoc inventions as far as my testimonial goes.

The book is thoroughly dishonest. I can explain its existence only by surmising that Moore was writing for a captive audience (manly American Catholics) in the confident expectation that Catholics would be willing, perhaps even eager, to fill in the flabbergasting blanks that the chronic lack of decent explanations leaves behind on almost every page.