The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum
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Book Reviews of The Girl Next Door
Book Review: Must-Read, If You Can Take It
Summary: 5 Stars
It's probably a good thing that this book was not the first I've read from Jack Ketchum. If it had been, I think I would have been very hard-pressed to ever read anything else by him.
It's not that it's a cliched story, or poorly written -- quite the opposite, on both counts. Jack Ketchum is a fantastic writer who paints pictures with words, in a stark, simple, appallingly graphic in-your-face savagery that compells you to follow along, even though you really don't want to. His writing, in all three of his novels I've read so far, is like the train that can't stop wrecking, & the reader is nearly forced to keep watching. There are a great many hacks churning out "horror" fiction -- hacks who promise to make you jump, who are proclaimed "shocking" & so on, but who seem incapable of actually Going There. Ketchum not only isn't afraid to Go There, he's not afraid to shove your nose in it.
Prior to reading this book, I had read The Lost -- which I found disturbing, but not difficult -- & Off Season, which nearly made me sick. I had thought, however, that in Off Season, Ketchum had gotten it out of his system. He depicted things in that book which no decent human being should even imagine, much less put to paper. But then I read The Girl Next Door. I have to admit ... having just read the single most repulsively grim depiction I'd ever experienced of the BackWoods Cannibals Slaughtering Innocent Vacationers, I really didn't see how a story about child abuse could be more shocking. But then, I read The Girl Next Door.
It's instructive to note Ketchum's own words on the two books -- that Off Season was about a family of cannibals, so it can't be taken seriously. The Girl Next Door, on the other hand, is about child abuse -- something that, tragically, happens every day, even in the United States, & not merely among the families of the poor. It's also instructive to note that Ketchum described having written some scenes for this book which, upon reading them, he thought were so disgusting he removed them from the story. Keep that in mind while you read this book ... & you won't be able to stop wondering, "If what they did to this poor child was THIS bad, what the heck did he self-censor?????"
It's not a question for which I desire an answer.
If you've never before read Jack Ketchum, I urge you to read something else by him first. In particular, I'd suggest you read The Lost, because it's actually a semi-conventional story, even if it is oddly disturbing in ways I can't really define. But it's still semi-conventional. It doesn't contain imagery of such horrific brutality as to make you wonder how the author could even think of such a thing; it doesn't make your stomach clench while you choke back that vile taste. The Girl Next Door, however, will do those things. On the other hand, if reading it makes you hug your children closer to you & love them more than you ever thought you could ... if reading it makes you want to volunteer for child welfare organizations to help the victims of child abuse ... if it outrages you that such human-shaped monsters could even exist in American society ... than I'm glad he was this unrelentingly brutal.
Book Review: Enduring hell with The Girl Next Door
Summary: 5 Stars
Novelist Jack Ketcham might very well be Satan in disquise. At the very least, he is the devil's advocate. In this story he forcefully throttles your comfort zone and shatters any notions you may have about the overall goodness of humanity. In almost sinister fashion, he guides you to the edge of hell then dares you to turn away. Not intended for the timid reader, this one is a total soul scorcher.
The Girl Next Door is loosely based on the unsettling true story of the murder of Sylvia Likens. This adaption takes place in the 1950's suburban America. Just a typical neighborhood that many people can identify with.
Meg is a pretty teenage girl that suffers unconscionable mental and physical punishment from her aunt Ruth. Now, any story about child abuse is going to be unsettling. What's even more unnerving here is the fact that several young family members and neighborhood kids witness the graphic torture as Meg is held captive in the basement. Many of them even join in on the horrific treatment of the poor girl. I can hardly think of a more terrible situation.
To make matters even more unbearable, Ketcham tells this story from the point of view of a frightened young boy named David. He cares about Meg, but is scared to tell any other adults about the situation. Plus he is strangely drawn to this whole ordeal. With Meg tied up and stripped naked, it eventually moves past the point of his rising sexual curiosity to helpless desperation.
Ketcham is a master storyteller. His vivid descriptions of the malicious torture are emotionally vicious, but he leaves much of it up to your darkest imaginations. The roughest part is the fact that we the readers are forced to gradually soak in David's thoughts and his guilt attached to the situation. That's where the book really stands apart from the movie. The events are repulsive, of course, but I remember also feeling guilty because I shared David's fascination and eagerness to return down to that basement.
There is never a dull moment in this book. It has some rich character development and fitting dialogue. Plus Aunt Ruth has to be one of the most heinous villans ever imagined. I'm telling you, she's ruthless. Most kids have a natural tendency to usually accept an adult's judgement as being wiser than their own. At least to a certain degree. But the way she is able to basically brainwash these children is flat out scary. Plus, who could actually do this sort of thing to another person, let alone a young teen? Evil knows no boundaries.
The Girl Next Door crosses a line that should never be touched, except in fictional books or movies. Some people might feel that a situation this grim shouldn't even be talked about. It will definitely invoke feelings of discomfort and contempt. But, welcome to the real world. Reality often blurs any sense of hope or righteousness. It's unfortunate--really shameful and disgusting--that something like this could ever happen. Once you open this book and start the descent into hell, there is no turning back. The wickedness will be forever emblazoned in your memory banks.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Book Review: One of my new favorite's (Repost)
Summary: 5 Stars
[...]
Stephen King said Jack Ketchum was one of the business, and that he is.
The Girl Next Door is a horrifying novel based on the true story of Sylvia Lykens, a girl that was brutally tortured and then killed by her aunt and cousins. The fact that The Girl Next Door was based off a true story inspired me to rent the movie, and it wasn't two days after I had watched the movie adaptation that I had read the book.
The book starts out with our narrator. Our narrator is the main character of the book. He's writing his story about what happened back at Ruth--the aunt's--house in the late 1950s, and it's a tale that pains him to write. Our character opens up with a thought of what true pain is, and how his first and second wife had never truly experienced it.
Then starts the story.
Our main character is David, a twelve-year-old boy who's crayfishing the day he meets a girl named Meg Loughlin. Meg's a girl, a real girl, not one out of the Playboy magazines that David and his friends look at. He's immediately attracted to Meg, but when he sees a scar, he questions it.
Meg's family had an accident... and only Meg and her sister, Susan, survived.
When David starts to see that Ruth is targeting Meg for some strange, unknown reason, he begins to get worried. Meg tells him that she hasn't eaten for three days one day while he and her are out walking together. This prompts David to buy her a sandwich, but Meg didn't know that sandwich would start the most brutal torture she has ever experienced.
The Girl Next Door is a truly frightening story. The novel is different from other books and movies that deal with torture. It isn't just an adult torturing someone in this film. No. The Girl Next Door shows us that children are just as capable of evil as any adult is, and that's what sets it apart. Speculation revolves around the book and why David chooses what he chooses to do, but I'm not going to go into that, as it would spoil the book.
The Girl Next Door is a thinking man's novel, and I promise you that it will make you question every single little thing you knew about the horrors that surround the world today. It only took this book to make me change my whole view on how the world can operate, and it only took this one book to make Ketchum one of my favorite authors.
Book Review: No ghosts, no demons. Just true human Evil
Summary: 5 Stars
Jack Ketchum is known as one of the most extreme writers in horror. This may lead you to assume he's someone doing 'gore for the sake of gore' or just making unbelievably evil one dimensional situations purely to torment people. You'd be very wrong.
Ketchum is a literate, dare I say poetic writer. His horror often comes not from surreal situations but rather the hyper-real. Everyday life shattered with depravity and violence that comes believeably; and that makes it all the morre horrible.
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is certainly a horror novel. It fills you with dread, repulsion, and fear. It also depresses you, because it is about the fragile grasp of morality that the pre-adolescent have, especially when they are being coerced by the mentally unstable. (if you think this story is not realistic look at cults, or even better, child soldiers and their warped reality in Africa).
Ketchum goes into aspects of life most writers fear to go. It is just too far out from the comfort zones, it leaves you feeling as if the world doesn't make any sense. The book is haunting and depressing. It is not enjoyable but it is a story that will get a reaction from anyone with a pulse. Think Lord of the Flies if Dahmer washed up on shore and began to lead the kids.
There are horror stories that aim to thrill and excite the desensitized, and then there are those that re-sensitize the calloused horror-file. GIRL NEXT DOOR is the latter. If too many Texas Chansaw Massacres have left you numb, pick this up and prepare for a wake-up slap to the face. And if you have no stomach for true evil human nature, then I fear for your sanity reading this book.
Book Review: Addictive and disturbing
Summary: 5 Stars
This was my second novel by Jack Ketchum, having enjoyed Off Season very much, This book, although very different to Off Season, is also brilliantly written and very difficult to put down. The Girl Next Door is loosely based on the true story of Sylvia Likins who was horrifically abused by her Aunt and cousins in the 1960's. [...] is a link if you want to read about the true story.
The protagonist of the novel is actual David a neighbourhood kid, not Meg herself (Sylvia's name is Meg in the book, the names and places are changed). Meg and Susan move in next door to David with their Aunt Ruth and three cousins after their parents are killed in a car accident. As the summer progresses, Ruths attitude towards takes a rather her neices takes a malicious turn, especially towards Meg who she starves because she thinks she is fat, and harsly criticises her at every opportunity. As Ruths sanity begins to deteriorate, she keeps Meg prisoner in the basement and, along with her sons and several neighbourhood children, submits her to both psychological and physical torture.
David desperaltly wants to help Meg as he loves her, but is too scraed of what might happen to him is he tells.
Very addictive reading and truely harrowing and fast paced once it gets started. This is a truely devestating and disturbing horror novel. All the more disturbing to know that it actually happened to someone, I so wished I could have saved Meg/Sylvia from what happened.
I'd deffinatly recomend this book to horror fans or anybody interested in the story of Sylvia Likins.