I don't read a lot of horror novels, but for me the most effective are those with characters that I come to care about. On that account Memorials succeeds. The narrator and his two friends are all well drawn with back stories that are easy to empathize with. The story starts out strong, but the pacing lags in the middle. This would have been a 5 star read had it been a bit shorter.
A nightmarish road-trip that's disquieting, poignant, nostalgic, and unpredictable. It's a wholly immersive and affective meditation on the communal nature of grief and a genuinely creepy examination of the rural legends and folklore that fueled the Satanic Panic of the '80s.
The sense of setting is absolutely phenomenal. Every small town Chizmar brings us through feels authentic in their superficial warmth and underlying judgemental weight. His choice to set it in the '80s, and not rely entirely on pop-culture nostalgia, fills the world of the book with an authenticity that adds to the paranoia of the plot. The friendship between the trio at the core of this book not only moves the increasingly threatening narrative forward in a way that so brilliantly builds up the tension and despair, but also beautifully adds further pathos to the overarching themes.
The sense of setting is absolutely phenomenal. Every small town Chizmar brings us through feels authentic in their superficial warmth and underlying judgemental weight. His choice to set it in the '80s, and not rely entirely on pop-culture nostalgia, fills the world of the book with an authenticity that adds to the paranoia of the plot. The friendship between the trio at the core of this book not only moves the increasingly threatening narrative forward in a way that so brilliantly builds up the tension and despair, but also beautifully adds further pathos to the overarching themes.
