The Lurker at the Threshold
by H. P. Lovecraft, H.P. Lovecraft, August Derleth
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Book Summary Information
Author: August Derleth, H. P. Lovecraft, H.P. LovecraftEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2003-06
ISBN: 0786711884
Number of pages: 208
Publisher: Running Press
Book Reviews of The Lurker at the Threshold
Book Review: The horror that never dies
Summary: 4 Stars
First, there's Lovecraft's own text. It's an outrageous exercise in adjectives, and a classic of purple prose. The, there's Something in the woods. It's been there for hundreds of years, even when not there, waiting to be summoned again. And, when it's summoned, people vanish. Then they reappear, or their broken, distorted, and half-frozen remains do, under bizarre circumstances. For all that, the story is more about hints, half-guesses, and that thing at the edge of your vision, the one that never wholly materializes and never really leaves you.
Although it's a thin book by today's standards of thud factor, it builds well. Three successive voices tell three phases of the story, with a new narrator beginning when the previous one is lost to human and humane reason. There's real subtlety in the plotting, even if the language is as florid as any.
I normally have reservations about posthumous collaborations - too often, I wish the originator had been alive to defend his work against later tampering. This one works well, though. Derleth knew Lovercraft, to the point of being his literary executor. If anyone knew Lovecraft's mind (a big "if"), it would have been him. I didn't notice obvious seams between the patches created by each author; the tone and pace held well. Still, I can't wholly trust the later writer to carry out the original's full intent, especially the intent of a mind like Lovecraft's. That's just me being pedantic, though. This is a classic example of the Lovecraft horror story, a kind that today's authors can't, and must never try to raise from the crypt in which its unholy remains had been imprisoned. (Oops - sorry. It does sort of get under your skin.)
//wiredweird
Summary of The Lurker at the Threshold
He is not to open the door which leads to the strange time and place, nor to invite Him Who lurks at the threshold ..." went the warning in the old family manuscript that Ambrose Dewart discovered when he returned to his ancestral home in the deep woods of rural Massachusetts. Dewart's investigations into his family's sinister past eventually lead to the unspeakable revelations of The Great Old Ones who wait on the boundaries of space and time for someone to summon them to earth. Acclaimed cult horror writer H. P. Lovecraft's notes and outlines for this tale of uncanny terror were completed by August Derleth, his friend and future publisher. Of the many Lovecraft-Derleth "posthumous collaborations," The Lurker at the Threshold remains the most popular, having sold 50,000 copies in its previous edition alone.
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