Bedbugs: A Novel of Infestation

Susan and her family feel blessed to find the perfect home within their budget, but something isn't right: the previous tenants left too quickly, there's problems with the house, and Susan begins to suspect they have a bedbug infestation--or worse. Bedbugs is ridiculous B-grade horror for better and worse. Its premise has potential, and Winters initially achieves a creeping, crawling, albeit transparent atmosphere of dread. It's not art but it is entertainment, consumable and thoughtless, scratching the itch for distraction and a horror story. But as the book progresses, Winters pulls out all the stops. He trades insidious for blatant and skin-crawling for violent, discarding everything in the way of originality and providing the sort of concrete explanation which dismisses the paranoia that proceeds it (and invalidates any potential for psychological horror). There's enough momentum to carry the book to the end, but the conclusions lets it down. It hardly matters, however: this is a few hours of distraction, cheap entertainment, ridiculous, gross, preying on an insect phobia with all the refinement of a when-insects-attack B movie. We picked up this book for two dollars, and I read it while killing an entire day on the train. Under those circumstances, it was a harmless, amusing, intentional waste of time. But under no circumstances can I actually recommend it.

Ben Winters' new novel, BEDBUGS, is a creepy, psychological tale of a woman's apparent descent into madness. The plot builds slowly, depicting a modern family's dealings with everyday minutiae, until slowly the appearance of something out of the ordinary makes itself known. The novel then roller coasters to a shocking, horrifying climax that was absolutely perfect. A great chiller but for one minor exception: Sarah, the female protagonist, is the laziest, spoiled brat wife I have ever encountered in fiction in a long time! I had absolutely no sympathy for her, and actually cheered when she had her just deserts handed to her. Very good book!

The review comparisons to Rosemary's Baby are spot on. BEDBUGS by Ben H. Winters is an ok read, I would say 3.5 stars if I could. Young couple, the Wendts, Alex, wife Susan and daughter Emma move into a new apartment that is above what they expected. Susan stays home and is an aspiring artist. She finds the little mysteries of the building and the apartment and seems to slip in to obsession with the possibility of bed bugs. Creepy. Then throw in a shadow character handyman and the hard to read yet too nice landlady, Andrea and the possible horror creeps in to the story. The ending for me just went too far off the pace of the story, it was like a rush to climax. Ben H. Winter can write. The bug stuff can actually make you itch, and the set up is very very good but Book 2 and 3 slip away. Movie rights will probably be sold, lol.

This could have been a seriously scary thriller. The scene is well drawn - couple moves into apartment too good to be true, with odd landlady, eerie caretaker, mysteriously unhappy previous tenants, and extra rooms not listed on the advertisement. But the initial rush of excitement wears off when odd things begin to take place. There is blood on the pillow - a spider? Bedbugs? The exterminator comes and pronouces the place clean. The wife sees bugs and feels their bites, sees larva, other signs - but the husband can't see them, and pooh-poohs the issue. Further research reveals that there is in fact a problem, and a pretty serious one - these are not ordinary bedbugs, and they are not on an ordinary mission of simple blood feasting.

The potential is great, the characters vividly drawn, the dialogue excellent. But the story ultimately does not reach its potential. Ideas are introduced, then never fully explained. Motives are not always clear. I do not wish to toss in anything that would be considered a spoiler, but there are loose ends that do not match up with the ending, or are simply left dangling, as though the author started up on one idea and then abandoned it in favor of another.

In general the book was fun, there are some thrilling bits to it, and the concept is chilling enough. But ultimately it falls just short of being really, really good.

The premise of this book is that a married couple and their young daughter move into a surprisingly affordable apartment in New York. Almost from the day they move in, odd things begin to happen, most of which are only apparent to the wife, Susan. The story is told from her point of view. Susan is an aspiring artist who obtained a law degree, apparently at the urgings of her family. She had been employed in a law firm prior to the beginning of the story, but she and her husband agreed she would quit in order to pursue her artistic dreams. Her husband, Alex, put aside his own artistic ambitions to operate a catalog photography business with a partner, in order to support the family. The business is struggling and there is stress in the marriage, especially after the expensive move.

Most of the strange activity in the apartment seems to be centered in a small "bonus" room that Susan uses as an art studio. The sole artwork she produces is a portrait of one of the previous tenants, people she only knows only from a photograph she found. These tenants were a couple who, according to the elderly landlady, vanished without paying their rent. The landlady, who lives downstairs, is accommodating and friendly. The almost equally elderly "handyman" is by turns kindly, threatening, and a bit dull; although he tells Susan he retired as assistant principal at a local school.

Susan comes to believe that the apartment is infested with bedbugs and that she has been bitten. Her husband and her daughter do not see or experience anything. Even when the highly recommended, and slightly oddball, exterminator finds nothing after an extensive examination, Susan continues to insist that the bugs are there. (I need to note somewhere, and it might as well be here, that I didn't find Susan to be an especially sympathetic character, even before her alarming personality change.) The bedbug obsession grows and Susan's grip on reality loosens until the ultimate confrontation with evil near the end of the book.

The first half of this novel was a real page turner, with great atmosphere. Somewhere around the middle, the wheels started to come off. It's hard to explain why I think so, but I just didn't enjoy the second half nearly as much. It seemed forced. Also, in a novel like this, I would expect to be left guessing at the end as to what was real and what was imaginary, or supernatural. This one spelled most of it out. When the mystery was revealed, it rang false to me. I can't explain why without massive spoilers, and I'm not sure I could articulate it anyway.

So, not a terrible book. The author definitely can write. It's a moderately short book (I finished it in an afternoon) and worth a read.

I don't understand multiple reviews that contain plot descriptions; doesn't the store already have that covered? Either way, I enjoyed the HELL (bad pun intended) out of this book. I'm an old Stephen King fan from way back, and even more so than Rosemary's Baby or other 70's horror books, this reminded me of classic SK. While there are a few unresolved issues, I didn't feel the ending was harsh, rushed or too ambiguous - I hate having to guess but I also don't need to be force-fed. I picked this up at a used book sale for two bucks, but wouldn't have minded paying full price. And yes, I'm still itching a little. I should say too that product placement doesn't bother me either, but I'm also a fan of Bret Easton Ellis, so maybe I'm immune. The iPhone plays a prominent roll, but that just solidifies the atmosphere, time and place. Highly enjoyable.

In a word, Bedbugs was flawless. I loved every frightening and overwhelming page. The marketing fellow at Quirk Books was kind enough to send me an advance copy and thank goodness he did because I would likely have missed this book, which will certainly go down as one of my favorites of the year.

The story is simple yet full of twists and turns. A young family moves into an apartment in Brooklyn Heights, NY that seems too good to be true. And so, of course, it is. The characters were authentic, the pacing was impeccable and the scary bits were, well, scary!

Part of the reason I enjoyed this book so much is because I've been reading a lot of contemporary novels recently and have been struck by how many authors try way, way too hard to write a sort of modern hipster character. They do so by just throwing in random, misplaced and often downright irrelevant cultural references or they quote some hipster author or hipster film and god damn does that get on my nerves.

Mr. Winters is clearly an actual hipster, or has at least spent time in actual hipster habitats, because he managed to write a totally believable, spot-on novel that feels authentically modern. The characters shop at Trader Joes and Ikea, they're constantly messing around on their iPhones and for goodness sake there is a cat named Catastrophe! It really did work though and had an honest, natural vibe that I do believe will stand the test of time.

Overall, this novel was crisp, original and terrifying. I would recommend it to the non-faint-of-heart but a warning: it'll make you want to burn your bedding.

A really creepy book! "Rosemary's Baby" for the 2010s! New York City in the 1960s had devil worshipers, but today it has something worse! When Susan Wendt and her family find the perfect apartment in Brooklyn, at an amazing rent, things couldn't be better. But is the elderly landlady more than eccentric? And what about that maybe too friendly handyman? And if the apartment absolutely doesn't have bedbugs, why is Susan so ITCHY! Highly recommended--if you're not too suggestible!

I really liked the author's book The Last Policeman so I gave this book a chance and I had a hard time getting into it because I knew the premise already and I thought the book would be predictable. Well I stuck it out and I really enjoyed it as the ending was a complete suprise. A well paced book with realistic dialogue that didn't belabor the point to the extreme that no one saw the bugs but Susan.

I kept looking at the title and then searching for something else to read, something kept bringing me back to this book. I am so glad I picked it. I won't go into a whole lot of detail because the details of the book have already been written by others.

The story seemed like it was a combination of several movies and other stories that I have seen and read. It just seemed familiar. Unlike other reviews, for me the beginning of the book was slow..it seemed to be up and down at first giving me a little at a time. I'm no sure if it was just me but sometimes..I was confused.

Into the second part of the book, I couldn't put it down although at times I had to so that I could scratch. By bedtime each day I read I was almost convinced that I had bedbugs. I couldn't wait to see what would happen at the end,and although I was a bit disappointed, I still think it was a good read..had the potential to be so much better and scarier..but I like it!

Bedbugs is a really well written piece of urban paranoia. The headlines shout out the fact that New York is being overrun with bedbugs, but when Susan wakes up to find one biting her in their new brownstone that is the last straw. The exterminator however can't find any evidence of bedbugs and why haven't Susan's husband and daughter seen anything or been bitten? Is she going insane or is there an even darker force at work in their new apartment? Consider yourself warned don't read this creepy tale right before bedtime....

You might be left scratching after this fun, fast-paced suspense novel in the vein of a "Night Gallery" episode (Think "Stephen King" meets "Dorian Gray"). Familiar characters allow the reader to jump immediately into the story and enjoy each twist and turn until the ultimate climax.

New Yorkers who have lived through the recent Bedbug scare will especially appreciate all the local flavor written with humor and aplomb.

The book moved along and had some creepy / itch inducing parts, but there were random loose ends never tied up, lengthy questions abruptly and stupidly answered and still questions left unanswered. When I finished it I just felt... "Meh."

This book was different than most of the horror books that I have read in the past. It was a fast passed book and kept me guessing until the end. I would recommend it to people that are lookin for something different than your typical horror novel