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US Mall 1 - Ghost Story
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List Price: $7.99
Our Price: $3.97
Your Save: $ 4.02 ( 50% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Pocket
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780671685638
ISBN: 0671685635
Label: Pocket
Manufacturer: Pocket
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 560
Publication Date: 1989-09-01
Publisher: Pocket
Studio: Pocket
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Booorrring! Way too long
Comment: This story started slow and remained that way. There are so many character I forgot who's who. Plugged as a horror story is wrong. The scary bits, if you can call them that, are few and far between. The story is predictable and a hard read.
There is no value for money.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Never been so glad that my dog ate the book
Comment: I'm an avid reader, and was looking forward to this book, which was recommended in an article on favorite choices of book clubs. After working my way through the first 200 boring pages which were not even particularly well-written, I was about to just give up when my puppy got hold of the paperback and shredded it. Turns out she did me a favor. How in the world did this book get such good reviews?? I'm stumped.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Comment: I found this book to be tedious, uninteresting, and utterly forgettable. Not really much more to say. Try before you buy; it is definately not for everyone despite Stephen King's recommendation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Solid
Comment: Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" is a compelling piece of literature and one of the finest and best written supernatural novels I have read in a while.
The Chowder Society is a group of mature men who have been an exclusive informal social group for years and must deal with the death of one of their members which they feel happened under unusual circumstances. This death signals the start of an evil resurgence within the town of Milburn and opens the wounds of old sins within the Chowder Society members. As past secrets are revealed and the town is isolated by an on-going winter storm, these men must confront ghosts from their past to save the town and their lives.
Straub takes a lot of time developing his characters and making sure that each has a well defined back "story" to bring them alive. In fact, everything in "Ghost Story" revolves around stories: ghost stories told by the Chowder Society, Don Wanderly's novels that seem to come alive, the Manitou stories.... The book has a wonderful physical ghost story as well as an underlying theme about how the passing of time develops its own stories, and it are these stories that are going to define you and be your ghost in the future.
After reading "Shadowland" recently and feeling that Peter Straub was talking over my head and laughing at the readers who could not pick-up the nuances in his writing, I was a bit apprehensive about "Ghost Story". However, the structure of the story was so well conceived that I found myself continually climbing up the steps Straub layered for me until I realized that I was dangling perilously high and was at the mercy of the author.
The first half of the book laid down the foundation of the story and was never dull. It introduced the characters with fine stories and provided enough mysterious elements to keep the story moving forward. In fact, the party scene where we are introduced to Anne-Veronica Moore is the best written section of the book. Character traits are revealed in an entertaining way and the whole section reads like a John Cheever story. It was a wonderfully written section. Once Straub finishes throwing the puzzle pieces on the table and the reader starts to see the entire picture, the book really takes off. The foreshadowing during the "Town" chapter marks a significant turn in the story. It is here the storm picks-up and the novel begins to spin dizzyingly, like snowflakes in the blizzard. Like a blizzard it never lets up the intensity until the very end.
Great stuff for anyone who has the patience to get lost in a well told and well constructed classic ghost story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The only novel that has genuinely scared me
Comment: This book was extremely reminiscent of Stephen King's "IT". Apart from the mythological origins of the evil creatures, I would almost say that they were of the same species. With that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It scared the living daylights out of me. I honestly had trouble sleeping at night and dreamt of these monsters regularly. I was a bit put off by all the character development, but it is absolutely essential for the story to work. It starts slow, and slows down even more, but somewhere around the middle, it explodes into tremendous horror story that left me on edge even after I was done reading it. Read this book, you won't regret it.
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Editorial Reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Booorrring! Way too long
Comment: This story started slow and remained that way. There are so many character I forgot who's who. Plugged as a horror story is wrong. The scary bits, if you can call them that, are few and far between. The story is predictable and a hard read.
There is no value for money.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Never been so glad that my dog ate the book
Comment: I'm an avid reader, and was looking forward to this book, which was recommended in an article on favorite choices of book clubs. After working my way through the first 200 boring pages which were not even particularly well-written, I was about to just give up when my puppy got hold of the paperback and shredded it. Turns out she did me a favor. How in the world did this book get such good reviews?? I'm stumped.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Tedious
Comment: I found this book to be tedious, uninteresting, and utterly forgettable. Not really much more to say. Try before you buy; it is definately not for everyone despite Stephen King's recommendation.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Solid
Comment: Peter Straub's "Ghost Story" is a compelling piece of literature and one of the finest and best written supernatural novels I have read in a while.
The Chowder Society is a group of mature men who have been an exclusive informal social group for years and must deal with the death of one of their members which they feel happened under unusual circumstances. This death signals the start of an evil resurgence within the town of Milburn and opens the wounds of old sins within the Chowder Society members. As past secrets are revealed and the town is isolated by an on-going winter storm, these men must confront ghosts from their past to save the town and their lives.
Straub takes a lot of time developing his characters and making sure that each has a well defined back "story" to bring them alive. In fact, everything in "Ghost Story" revolves around stories: ghost stories told by the Chowder Society, Don Wanderly's novels that seem to come alive, the Manitou stories.... The book has a wonderful physical ghost story as well as an underlying theme about how the passing of time develops its own stories, and it are these stories that are going to define you and be your ghost in the future.
After reading "Shadowland" recently and feeling that Peter Straub was talking over my head and laughing at the readers who could not pick-up the nuances in his writing, I was a bit apprehensive about "Ghost Story". However, the structure of the story was so well conceived that I found myself continually climbing up the steps Straub layered for me until I realized that I was dangling perilously high and was at the mercy of the author.
The first half of the book laid down the foundation of the story and was never dull. It introduced the characters with fine stories and provided enough mysterious elements to keep the story moving forward. In fact, the party scene where we are introduced to Anne-Veronica Moore is the best written section of the book. Character traits are revealed in an entertaining way and the whole section reads like a John Cheever story. It was a wonderfully written section. Once Straub finishes throwing the puzzle pieces on the table and the reader starts to see the entire picture, the book really takes off. The foreshadowing during the "Town" chapter marks a significant turn in the story. It is here the storm picks-up and the novel begins to spin dizzyingly, like snowflakes in the blizzard. Like a blizzard it never lets up the intensity until the very end.
Great stuff for anyone who has the patience to get lost in a well told and well constructed classic ghost story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The only novel that has genuinely scared me
Comment: This book was extremely reminiscent of Stephen King's "IT". Apart from the mythological origins of the evil creatures, I would almost say that they were of the same species. With that being said, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It scared the living daylights out of me. I honestly had trouble sleeping at night and dreamt of these monsters regularly. I was a bit put off by all the character development, but it is absolutely essential for the story to work. It starts slow, and slows down even more, but somewhere around the middle, it explodes into tremendous horror story that left me on edge even after I was done reading it. Read this book, you won't regret it.
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