Best Book of 2010

I thought I would try to get this in before we are so far along in 2011, everyone forgets 2010 existed. Rather than try to rank the books from 1 to 10 like I usually do, I’m just going to go with a list of honorable mentions, then the top book. All of this is just my opinion, of course. I would also like to say that I tend to read books when I get to them, which is often well after the publication date (and sometimes before it), so my favorite book of 2010 may be something I’ll read in 2017, if the world doesn’t end in 2012. There is a bit of uncertainty on my part as to when some books came out, and I’m trying to stick with books published in 2010, not ones I got to in 2010. I don’t know if Norman Prentiss’ Invisible Fences, a favorite book of mine, was published last year or not. I think I first got to read it back in 2008. If it is a 2010 book, it should have been a contender, but I think I picked it as my top book of 2008, so I arbitrarily excluded it this time.

One thing that might be mildly controversial: everyone talks, of course, about how the heart and soul of the horror genre is the small press. I read a lot of small press publications, and they put out a lot of good things, but this year, the books I enjoyed most were published by the traditional big publishing houses. I have an opinion concerning that which I hope to put down in writing someday soon.

First the honorable mentions. This year seemed to be a year in which vampires, at least part of the time, stopped sparkling and came back to the dark side. Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan published the second part of their Strain Trilogy with The Fall, and Justin Cronin kicked off a trilogy with The Passage (review to come), a book that enjoyed a considerable boost from Stephen King. Peter Straub returned with the lyrical A Dark Matter. Stephen King published one of his periodic collections of four novellas in Full Dark, No Stars (review to come), which I thought was one of his strongest offerings in years. I enjoyed all these books quite a bit, and they mostly feature familiar names, and all come from big publishers. Perhaps I’m becoming more conventional, but I thought the books showed a generally higher quality of effort, and almost universally a stronger attention to editing, the great bugaboo of most of the small press.

My favorite book of 2010 is not from a familiar name, although it was a large mainstream publishing house. Australian author Stephen M. Irwin’s book The Dead Path hit all the right chords with me. The book, which told of a young man returning home to confront his childhood fears and a manifestation of The Green Man, heralded the arrival of a major new talent, in my opinion.

There you have it. The usual disclaimers, this is my opinion only, does not represent a scientific study, and no animals were harmed in the writing of this post.
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A Dark Matter

In the pantheon of horror writers, Stephen King sits at the top, a position he has occupied since the late 1970s. There have been few serious challengers to that throne, but one of the authors who come closest is King’s sometime collaborator, Peter Straub. In the early 1980s, Straub wrote one of the great books of the genre, Ghost Story, and has enjoyed great sales success since, often writing outside the horror genre. His latest book is A Dark Matter, which will be released by Doubleday on Tuesday, February the 9th.

Many of the writers of today don’t truly love language. Words are a means to an end with them, a way to force the story out. Not so Peter Straub. His writing reveals a great love for words, simple or obscure. The emphasis on how the story is told as well as what is told makes a book like A Dark Matter into a supposedly mythical creature: a genre novel that is also a literary novel. This comes as no surprise to those of us who are regular Straub readers.

The 1960s, as we all know, was a time of the exploration of freedom, of youth asserting itself, and the rejection of societal norms. It was also a great time for con men who preyed on the intelligent yet naïve students for sex, power, money, or whatever else they wanted. One such of these gurus is named Spencer Mallon, and four high school students, Lee Truax (The Eel), Dilly Olson, Jason Boatman, and Hootie Bly fall prey to his spell. Mallon claims he has arcane knowledge that will cast aside the veil separating this reality from others, and so the four students participate in a ritual with deadly consequences, which leave them scarred as well as gifted: Hootie goes insane, Lee goes blind, Dilly goes to prison and so on.

Years later, the one member of their group who refused to participate in the Mallon business, Lee Harwell, who married Lee Truax, becomes obsessed with learning what happened in the ritual he missed. His own wife won’t talk about it, so one at a time he tracks down the other participants to hear their very different versions of what went on. Knowledge always comes at a price, and Harwell soon realizes the risk he is running in uncovering the secrets.

As I mentioned before, no one really writes like Straub any more. The mystery unveils slowly, through somewhat contradictory testimony. Patience is required of a reader (and possibly access to a dictionary – the crazed Hootie in particular is obsessed with often obscure words. If you’re not careful, you’ll learn something.) but, have that patience, and you will be rewarded. This is not a book about a giant monster smashing Tokyo. It is a book of events that are quieter yet no less horrific, of the toll that secrets take on our lives. I recommend you put down your usual fare and give this a try. Not only is it a good book in a time when they are becoming rare, I’ve got a feeling it’s the sort of book that will hold up well to repeated readings.
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Win Something Free

Nothing like the promise of free loot to drive the hit-counter up, and, again courtesy of Matt Staggs, there is a contest to win a free, signed copy of Peter Straub's forthcoming book A Dark Matter. Go to the official Straub Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/officialpeterstraub and describe the scariest thing about your home town. The scariest thing about my town is the influence of Southern Baptists churches, but that's fairly common in the South.
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Trailer for A Dark Matter

Courtesy of my friend Matt Staggs, here is a trailer for Peter Straub's new book A Dark Matter, due in stores February 9th. I'm partially through a review copy (look for a complete review next week) and it is classic Straub, which is good indeed.