Nana - Mark Towse Delivers The Goods
Word of mouth sometimes makes me buy a book. Other times it’s authors I’ve read on the past, they’ve written stuff that I’ve liked and so I buy their new book assuming I’ll like that one too. The point is there are lots of reasons to buy a book to see how it is.
The saying goes “don’t judge a book by its cover” and in my opinion that’s only half true. Just because a book has a terrible cover doesn’t mean it’s a terrible book. I’ve seen many bad covers over the years but won’t name any names here. However, the cover of the book is the first thing you see and it’s almost impossible to look at a book with a great cover and not be curious as to what the book is about. This is how I came to want to read Nana by Mark Towse. I’ve read some short stories by Mark in the past and enjoyed them, but when I saw the cover of Nana, I knew it was something that I wanted to read.
I’m happy to report that the story itself is just as engrossing as the cover. It’s a quick read but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a whole lot of story to digest. It starts with XXX delivering newspapers to the elderly people in a small neighborhood. These quick-hit chapters give the reader an introduction to each of the main players on this story in a way that I thought was unique and really helped to build the story. From there we are introduced to Ollie who is spending the night as his Nana’s house so that his parents can spend a much needed night together hashing out some problems in their marriage. Ollie hates visiting his Nana and is not looking forward to the night. From there, things get strange and weird, but telling any more will give away too much.
Towse’s strength in this novella is his character development. Each character has their own personality and you understand their motivations very well. It can be hard to accomplish that kind of depth of character in a novella due to the length constraints, but Towse manages to make you care about his characters which pulls you from one page to the next.
Overall, Nana is both funny and unsettling. It has just the right amount of creep factor and action to pull you through the story and make you want to keep reading. I’d recommend this to anyone who loves weird/bizzaro horror. It was certainly a hit for me. Strong 4/5.
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