Book Review: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

NOS4A2 by Joe Hill (William Morrow, 2013) Trade paperback, 686 pages.  ISBN #978-0-06-220058-7.  

 

Summary from the Goodreads website . . . . .

 

NOS4A2 is a spine-tingling novel of supernatural suspense from master of horror Joe Hill, the New York Times bestselling author of Heart-Shaped Box and Horns.

 

Victoria McQueen has a secret gift for finding things: a misplaced bracelet, a missing photograph, answers to unanswerable questions. On her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike, she makes her way to a rickety covered bridge that, within moments, takes her wherever she needs to go, whether it’s across Massachusetts or across the country.

 

Charles Talent Manx has a way with children. He likes to take them for rides in his 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith with the NOS4A2 vanity plate. With his old car, he can slip right out of the everyday world, and onto the hidden roads that transport them to an astonishing – and terrifying – playground of amusements he calls “Christmasland.”

 

Then, one day, Vic goes looking for trouble—and finds Manx. That was a lifetime ago. Now Vic, the only kid to ever escape Manx’s unmitigated evil, is all grown up and desperate to forget. But Charlie Manx never stopped thinking about Victoria McQueen. He’s on the road again and he’s picked up a new passenger: Vic’s own son. 

 

 

My review from the Goodreads website . . . . .

 

      In the acknowledgments following the end of the novel, Hill describes NOS4A2 as a novel of childhood, wonder, and loss. It’s all of that plus a fascinating dark fantasy with gripping horrific elements. In addition to this highly imaginative and epic narrative there are remarkable characters that are fully realized, and many are endearing. There’s also an underlying theme that touches on the debilitating effects of child abuse. 

 

     The six-page prologue fore-shadows the events that have yet to be detailed so well that some readers may feel compelled to dive in and change their plans for the day. 

 

     It’s appropriate that I began reading this in December, one week before the Christmas holidays.  In NOS4A2, children can enjoy Christmas every day, even in mid-summer, as long as they make the journey to the seemingly magical Christmasland which exists in another realm in an alternate geography corresponding to Colorado.

 

     The ageless Charles Talent Manx, with the assistance of a 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith that travels to Christmasland along a parallel holiday highway, sees himself as a self-appointed social worker.  He seeks children from broken homes, generally with single parents, and ‘rescues’ them from their sad lives of abuse or neglect. The rescue always results in the disappearance of both the murdered parent, with the child either coming along willingly or gassed into submission.

 

      Manx is not a pedophile or a child abuser, although he has no qualms about brutalizing or killing adults.  He truly believes he is a children’s crusader, looking out for their best interests.  His vision becomes reality because he believes it, as his mini-sermons to non-believers reveal. As the poor children make the journey with him to Christmasland in the locked backseat of the Wraith, they become weaker.  Manx is a psychic vampire, who maintains his health by draining the souls and transforming his passengers into cruel twisted versions of the children they once were.

 

     He’s assisted in his efforts by the faithful Bing Partridge, who wears a vintage WWI gas mask when he subdues the youngsters and adults singled out by Manx. Partridge is both sadist and rapist, tormenting and violating the mothers in his basement House Of Sleep before terminating them. A more despicable duo in modern horror fiction is not likely to be found.  Hill does a great job of making readers hate both Manx and Bing.

 

     But there are others with reality bending abilities like Manx, but different from him.  Young Victoria “Vic” McQueen uses her bicycle (and later a motorcycle) to materialize a wooden covered bridge that will transport her to places she needs to be, even places in the alternate world.   Maggie is a drug-addicted librarian who can read Scrabble tiles like runes and ends up assisting Victoria. 

 

     Vic is the only child to both travel to on her own, and then escape from Manx’s twisted world of his imagination.  The novel revolves around Manx’s various attempts to find Vic and take revenge for burning down his Christmasland mansion.

 

    The prologue is outstanding, and creepy in all the right places.  It really sets the tone and lines readers up for everything that happened before this. During my reading of this, a sense of dread crossed through my mind like a slowly moving shadow.  I couldn’t wait to read more. 

 

   There are many characters throughout, with major and minor roles, and all are fully realized.  Strong character development is a mainstay of this novel.  Victoria is my favorite, and Maggie was a strong second - -  until I learned more about Vic’s lover Lou and father to their son, Bruce Wayne Carmody.  Lou is overweight and awkward ,but a positive personality with a big pop culture fixation. The insights into Bruce’s character as revealed through his actions during the Wraith journey are great. 

 

     Vic survives her first trip to Christmasland.  Her escape, culminating in a grisy and shocking gas station encounter, left me needing a breather. Her second meeting with Manx, occurring twenty years later and her first introduction to Partridge, is very chilling. Her third encounter is very disturbing.  I was rooting for her all the way during their fourth and final meeting.

 

    Hill lays out the background of Vic’s adult life and the changes in her outlook and mental state in a section that takes up a good portion of the first third of the book. The characterization is so good that even knowing that another encounter with Manx is inevitable, readers (at least this one) develop a sense of dread as the signs (etheral phone calls) appear that Manx is closing in. I was able to empathize with Vic’s mental state 100 percent.  That’s some very powerful writing when the author makes you feel like you’re the character. 

 

   Hill uses an analogy to sum up VIc’s turmoil that is brilliant:  “Choking to death on smoke was easier than the feeling that she felt now, a kind of tearing inside that never stopped.  She was a bedsheet being ripped this way and that, and soon enough would be nothing but rags.”

 

   I anticipated the ending but not how Hill wrapped up the story in the final chapter.  Throughout my reading of NOS4A2 I sensed an underlying message throughout the novel, which the last chapter really reinforced for me. In addition to childhood, wonder, and loss Hill’s story caused me to consider how events early in life can shape a character and change a person’s outlook and path forward for decades to come.  Consider the effects of child abuse - physical, sexual and mental - -  and how it leaves an imprint that shapes that person forever. 

 

     There are incredible illustrations throughout by frequent Hill collaborator Gabriel Rodriguez that help to evoke an earlier period of Christmas past and also enhance the overall creepiness of the events.