Night of the Mannequins - Terrifying and Surreal
I am in love with this book. The writing is very well done, with the perspectives of these teenagers being presented in a very believable and nostalgic way. Even the games they played together were things I'd forgotten I'd done with my own childhood friends, and I commend Stephen Graham Jones for recalling these things with vivid clarity.
This is one of those books that you can't say too much about without spoiling the plot. It is terrifying and surreal. I felt like I could relate to Sawyer, which became a slippery slope in and of itself, almost like a sinkhole pulling me in with no hope of getting out.
There were some fantastic lines that synced up beautifully with what's going on in the plot and I was often awestruck by them:
"It takes real imagination to connect the dots the right way. Imagination with a little helping of guilt."
"Sometimes you just know what you're doing is the only thing to be doing. That the world is conspiring all around you to make it happen, like, not just giving you permission, but herding you the direction you need to go, giving you secret nods and obvious hand signals, and getting everything out of the way so you have the clearest path possible."
The pareidolia in the second quote is all too relatable and makes everything happening even more disturbing and scary. It helps that I am also terrified of mannequins. When I was a child, I would always make a point to talk nicely in front of my Barbies, lest they gang up on me and murder me in my sleep for shit-talking them or treating them poorly.
This book really connected with me and I believe I'll be reading everything Stephen Graham Jones has to offer. I also recommend reading this book during the Autumnal season because it just feels a little Halloween-ish, even though it wasn't explicitly suggested. Read it!
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