Book Review: THE PALLBEARERS CLUB by Paul Tremblay

THE PALLBEARERS CLUB by Paul Tremblay (William Morrow And Company, July 2022) Hardcover, 288 pages.  ISBN # 0063069911 / 9780063069916  

From the synopsis on the Goodreads website . . . . .

      A cleverly voiced psychological thriller about an unforgettable—and unsettling—friendship, with blood-chilling twists, crackling wit, and a thrumming pulse in its veins, from the nationally bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song.

What if the coolest girl you've ever met decided to be your friend?

Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a seventeen-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses.

Okay, that part was a little weird.

So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things—terrifying things—that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?

Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she's making cuts.

Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship. 

My Five-Star Review on the Goodreads website . . . . .

     THE PALLBEARERS CLUB marks a first for the works of Paul Tremblay, who I consider one of the most creative modern writers of horror, always experimenting and messing with some familiar tropes of the genre. This is the first time I have seen so many negative reviews of his work on the Goodreads site. A divisive novel, to be sure . . . . you'll either hate it or love it. I love it. I've already bookmarked this for a second reading in 2023 or later. 

     With this novel, Tremblay takes a stab at writing literary fiction, but manages to keep it real. As he states in the afterword, the main character (Art Barbara, not even the narrator's true name) is based on Tremblay. The identification of specific landmarks and past locales in Providence R.I. / Boston MA are testament to his knowledge of the area and certainly help to cement that realistic feel. Plus, this reads like an actual memoir that someone other than Tremblay might have written because it's different than his other writings, complete with lengthy sections that could have benefited from some revision (on purpose, I believe), awkward comparisons, and even errors.

    

The brilliance of this novel, and what kept me going despite the length and the afore-mentioned drawn-out scenes, is the way that it is told. This is a fictional memoir detailing the coming-of-age of Art and the on-again, off-again decades long friendship/relationship with an equally intriguing and strange character identified as Mercy (the novel also alleges to this not being her true name, one of the clever side plots inserted by Tremblay). Mercy finds the unpublished manuscript and makes red-line notations in the margins, and writes lengthy and often brutal critiques at the end of chapters. 

     This is not a straight-up horror novel despite the presence of supernatural elements and suspicions about the true character of Mercy and later, Art. Also, as with his other novels, Tremblay has a way of creating reader suspicion that the supernatural and weird scenes in his novels have a rational explanation. Madness, a vivid imagination, and coincidence are just a few that come to mind in THE PALLBEARERS CLUB.

          While there are some frightening and disturbing scenes THE PALLBEARERS CLUB is more about the strange relationship (I would hesitate to call it romance) between the two primary characters. 

      Tremblay even pokes fun at the story and himself, red-lining the title page to cross out "Art Barbara" as author and insert "Paul Tremblay" and then cross out "a memoir" and insert "a novel" on the title page. Later in the book, the characters refer to a paranormal incident in the neighborhood which occurs in Tremblay's A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS novel.

     There are a plethora of musical references sprinkled throughout the novel as music, specifically 1980's rock from Bob Mould and Husker Du, plays a large part in the life and troubled careers of Art Barbara. There's even a Spotify playlist based on The Pallbearers Club which features every song mentioned in the novel. 

     There's a lot to absorb and reflect on here. Anyone who invests in at least 50 pages of this novel is not likely to so easily dismiss it. I believe it belongs on the short list of Tremblay's best works.