About this deal
There were a couple of moments that had me pretty green around the gills, and I usually have a fairly iron stomach for horror. Not content with having her look after our white leads in the most motherly fashion possible, Elsie is also the dreaded mixture of spiritual and sassy. Muriel Margaret McAuley has seen a lot in her 84 short years, and she’s going to see a lot more over the coming days.
The Haar by David Sodergren book reviews | Goodreads
I know I just said it, but I loved Muriel with a passion – what happens to her over and over is so appalling, and once she gets something to fight back with, I was cheering for her every step of the way. Like most towns so connected to the sea, there are mythological beings and interesting happenings surrounding the waters. Muriel is such a deep and unique character that you were completely immersed in from her first explosive scene and everything beyond that. It seamlessly blends cosmic horror, folk horror, and body horror in the most disturbing and gruesome ways.Had I known it was about an elderly woman becoming obsessed with a jelly creature and pretending it’s her husband - I would’ve never picked the book up. I’ve already loaded another David Sodergren book into my kindle—Maggie’s Grave—and can’t wait to get into it. They talk of ‘All the culture you can take – The Hollywood Bowl, the Universal Tour,’ and take potshots at Brian DePalma for wasting money on Blow Out. It’s another to keep a sea creature alive and beg it to cosplay as your hubby cause you have unresolved issues. It’s as if he’s saying that horror fans will literally watch any old garbage, whether it’s recycled footage from two years prior or just some low budget junk he shot with his friends by the side of a pool.
The Haar: A Horror Novel: Sodergren, David: 9798800159837
So, it should be no surprise that I’m always excited to read what David conjures, knowing how phenomenal of a job he does taking my Playdough manuscript and turning it into a Marble work of art (lol). Muriel Margaret McAuley was eighty-four years old the first time she saw a man turned inside-out by a sea monster. Honestly, a full sequence showing him sleeping on the job, fishing, eating and just generally doing no work, before being seduced by the bored rich housewife and killed. And don’t get that phrase stuck in your brain and not take a chance because I used the dreaded ‘R’ word. The Haar was excellently paced, an easy read to breeze through, and stirred in me rainbow of emotion.
I can not wait to see what is the next nightmare that David is brewing at home with his extremely adorable pug.
David Sodergren – Paperbacks and Pugs | The official website David Sodergren – Paperbacks and Pugs | The official website
Then there's the cliche yelled from a police blow horn at an 80-something year old widow: You are surrounded! is being forced out of their cottages and off their ancestral land by Big Bad American billionaire Patrick Grant.Hello, I’m gonna keep this short because since I last updated my blog (umm, in 2020), WordPress has changed how it works and I have neither the time not the inclination to figure out its new quirks and eccentricities. It's set in a small Scottish seaside fishing village that's under threat of a billionare land developer. But at the same time, the violence is so deserved to those that receive it that I had difficulty feeling bad (disclaimer: I in no way condone this violence in real life, lol. There are just enough crazy supernatural deaths to keep you from falling asleep, and there’s the classic scene near the end where Susan’s breasts grow faces and rip someone’s guts out, but everything around these moments seem designed to make you not give a shit, and it is for this reason that I simply can’t recommend Mausoleum.
Review: The Haar by David Sodergren – Escaping in Paper
Muriel has lived in the remote Scottish village of Witchaven her entire life – she literally knows nothing else and has no desire to go to a new place, especially at 80+ years old. The same is true for The Haar, but it stays interesting and smart enough to keep an academic entertained. So many points I could raise, but in short it’s just like a very cheesy 80’s action film, full of cliche and hammy writing. Look at his body of work thus far; ‘The Forgotten Island,’‘Night Shoot,’‘Dead Girl Blues,’ Maggie’s Grave,’ The Perfect Victim,’ and ‘Satan’s Burnouts Must Die!It manages to successfully condense that movie into just over half an hour, cutting out all the faff and just leaving in the sex and violence and in a perverse way, it’s an improvement. So, sorry, but I can't really recommend this novel to any serious horror fan unless they are ready to suspend all logic and enjoy bashing Americans.