Because the introduction remains ambiguous about his unborn child, the reader is left unknowing of the fate of Chloe, allowing for the reader to immerse themselves in the raw detail of the transformation and put hope in Chloe's survival. Pinborough's use of humor and outright nasty details of Chloe as she balloons into fictional My 600lb Life type of character is successful at hooking the reader to invest into the less predictable occurrences within the story. One of my personal favorite references Matthew uses is when he describes the love of his life walking away from him after she gives him some money to go to a bar to give her some space. Because I like watching the 600lb life transformations, when he roughly says she looks like one of those obese Americans who lost weight and needs skin removal surgery, I found the rest of the story up until the point where he escapes as she dies on the floor hilarious. I also pictured the women to look like the little fat people from WALL-E, waddling like grossly fat babies wearing clothing that's clearly too small for them with little tiny purses.
This relates back to the chapter from Writers Workshop of Horror about adding humor to horror. I believe this to be an example of humor being added in a way where it can be seen as funny, but if a reader did not find it humorous it would not deter them from the story. Instead they might just feel like the description was disgusting or offensive. Matthew's undying love for Chloe as she blows up, regardless of how the reader feels about the description of what is happening to the women, reels the tone back in and adds to the likability of Matthew.
My personal favorite scene for reasons involving the humor and horror of Pinborough's writing is in chapter four, when Chloe is reaching her final form. Part of me wants to quote the whole page, but I will restrain myself to this portion:
Finally, she must have slid down the fridge freezer to sit on the floor, and then after she broke long and noisy wind, she settled down to snorting occasionally as she panted. After about half an hour, I heard something squelch, something wet perhaps, on the quarry tiles we had chosen together not that very long ago. And then there was silence. 45This portion of the paragraph demonstrates how Pinborough injects what I find disgustingly laughable humor, bathroom humor I suppose is the best name for it, infused with grotesque word choice to create something nasty. I point to the word "squelch" because I find it perfect for what is being envisioned, followed by the wet slop that follows what we, as readers, are starting to figure out in the moment. That baby isn't the baby Matthew is talking about in the prologue unless it's coming back as a mutant spider baby fetus. To bring the tone back in gracefully, Pinborough wraps it up by using Matthew's sentiment towards those now tainted tiles.
Personally, I feel the story could have ended at the end of chapter four, but she continues on creating new conflicts to give a bigger story to the spiders while still leaving the ending rather open. I would like to think that the spiders win, Matthew is just a positive ninny, and he put the spiders inside his new girl that he is driving off with which is why the dog runs away. Overall, the beginning of the story felt the most compelling to me, while the rest of the book was more or less just an intriguing thriller. The major complaint I have is there was a little drag during the survival scene at the camp, but because Pinborough added the "men inflicting women with spider babies" which, to me, was coming off very strong in her "in between the lines story", I was kept interested in the vulnerability of the women. I think the biggest mystery left open at the end is about the deafness, which I had just assumed was something to do with the spiders not being able to hive-mind with deaf things. So, in the end we're still left wondering what exactly is happening and why, but we're wrapped up enough to feel content with Matthew's personal story.
I agree that the book felt like it could be two separate stories almost, the story of Matt and Chloe, and then everything after in a more grand sense that happened to humanity and the new group that formed.
ReplyDeleteI didn't think that the last girl was infected though, because otherwise the dog wouldn't have gotten into the car with her in the end in the first place, even if he left to be with the old man eventually.
I'm also glad you brought up that the author didn't hide the plot with the blurb or the title. I wonder how the books beginning would be read if people didn't know from the start that it was going to be spiders?
I felt that was the biggest flub of the whole story. I think it would have been far more scary for me as a reader to not already know what was happening to Chloe.
DeleteInteresting to me that you point out all this humor. I didn't find any of it humorous. Probably the closest I came to feeling humor was the "broke long and noisy wind." Usually a fart in any form is funny. But buried in with all the other gross things that were going on, even that didn't come off as funny to me. This isn't really a complaint. I guess I'm just pointing out the differences in how the same text can be interpreted by different readers. Pinborough did a great job with the disgusting description. And the description of the widows and the other horrors. It was the strength of the novel. But I wasn't laughing. I was grossed out... and eagerly going to what was coming next because it was very compelling.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I get what you're saying. I am pretty sure my sense of humor is horrible and I'm in the minority of people who interpreted the scene as funny. I also think humor is my natural coping mechanism, so if I was feeling disgusted my mind masked it by thinking it was funny.
DeleteI agree that the biggest mystery left at the end for me was the deafness. I suspect that Pinborough didn't explain that because she wanted to leave a mystery for the sequel, but I wish she would have started answering some of those questions sooner. My general feeling is that if a question hasn't been answered by a few chapters after I as a reader has come up with a good working theory, the author is underestimating her readers' intelligence. Either that, or the protagonist is meant to be a moron. Which could be the case, because honestly, how long does it take to figure out that a dog is deaf after they don't react to submachine gun fire? It seems pretty clear to me that the deaths of the animals, the mens' headaches, and the widows' hive-mind all are connected somehow to some sort of sub-audible frequencies. I don't know why that would lead to deaf people/animals' blood being toxic, but the fact that none of the characters even started to make the connection between sound/deafness/frequencies/psychic communication really irritated me. It can be fun as a reader to start figuring things out before the characters do, but too much of a gap and it starts to lose its luster. Maybe I'm just picky, but I think that's probably part of the reason I won't read the sequel, even to answer those questions. (Because at this point I start to wonder if it's a big mystery or just a plot hole that will never be answered, given how oblivious the characters seem to its potential importance.)
ReplyDeleteI don't know that I would want to read the next novel just because of the predictability of everything. I mostly had fun with how I felt the story was comical and disturbing.
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