Goblin - Ruining Lives in the Best Way
Something is wrong in the town of Goblin. Maybe it’s the cops with stilted speech who don’t walk right and wear sunglasses even at night. Maybe it’s the topiaries spread throughout town, massive replicas of its most prestigious citizens. Or maybe it’s the strange midnight magic shows for kids. Or the fact that it almost always rains, irrespective of the weather beyond the town’s borders. Or it could be the gigantic hedge maze no one seems to know how to solve, but which promises a prize for whoever gets to its heart. Any way you look at it, Goblin is just off.
Josh Malerman is probably most famous for his 2014 book, Bird Box. His 2017 book, Goblin, sets a very different tone. Malerman breaks his book into six novellas, which ever so slightly brush up against one another, and manage to create a clever unity by the end. I enjoyed how the last novella turned out to be an unexpected crescendo to the themes found in the previous five.
Reading Goblin, I felt comparisons to Stephen King were almost unavoidable. Several times I found myself thinking about how King has conjured up whole towns with the vividness and depth of someone who’s actually walked across Derry’s bridge or entered through the front door of Needful Things in Castle Rock. I think Malerman gets very close to the same level of town building here. Goblin is a little less realistic, but that’s okay, because it is supposed to be. It’s more magical and bizarre than Castle Rock, and it really works for Malerman’s tone. You get a great sense of the town, its history and citizens, the institutions, shops, and prominent persons. I could smell the streets of downtown Goblin and when the last page was done, I wanted more. (If you’re reading this, Mr Malerman, I mean it. More Goblin, please!)
The novellas A Man in Pieces reminded me of a classic Stephen King short story. It’s the tale of Richard who adopts Charles as his best friend, even though Charles is the unquestionable weirdo of the school and he knows this will do damage to his popularity. Like so many of King’s early shorts, the novella revolves around childhood, youth, innocence, friendship, and our expectations of what that should entail. And then, it twists those expectations into something horrifying.
The novella Kamp is the story of a reclusive bookworm and his landlady. Nearly all the action takes place in a single apartment. It feels reminiscent of Poe with its claustrophobia, a single location drawing huge events and themes into its blackhole. The protagonist, Walter Kamp, seems to be slipping into an insanity caused by his learning and the revelations opened up to him about the history of Goblin. I cannot help but feel like there’s a nod to H P Lovecraft here.
In many ways, Happy Birthday was probably my favorite. More than any other novella in the collection, it manages to draw all the stories together, sucking them all in, explaining things you’ve been wondering about for pages and pages, and then breaking your new-found knowledge into pieces as it dumps new mysteries upon you.
Each and every story was a delight. They were all charmingly different. This allows the book to continually refresh itself as you go along, but also makes you wonder all the more how it all fits together. (Spoiler: it does.) Honestly, I absolutely steamrolled through this 432 page book. I lost sleep. I didn’t eat. (So, maybe a weight loss opportunity?) I probably didn’t bathe. I know I ignored my family. And that, dear friends, is about the highest recommendation I can give to any book. If a book is slowly ruining my life and even killing me, then it is genuinely great.
