Universal Harvester: A Novel

Granted our library doesn’t get all that many new scary ebooks, but a ghost sticker for this one is a real reach. In fact, it’s a mystery while this gets any classification but drama, although I can see how that came to be. Premise…late 1990s, small town Iowa, video store rental tapes suddenly start showing footage that isn’t part of the original, more like someone’s surveillance tapes. Ok, yeah, that does sound spooky, but I promise you there’s a perfectly logical explanation for this, ok maybe logical is a stretch, but it certainly isn’t paranormal or supernatural in any way. The ghosts in this novel are all too real, as real as those they haunt, this is all above love and family and disappearance of thereof. Told in a very unusual way. I was initially attracted to the novel by the setting (which is really only about a quarter of the book), it just had my mind doing nostalgic cartwheels through my medial temporal lobe. But that was just the immediate superficial attraction, the book offered so much more. Despite oodles of less than favorable reviews on GR, this one managed to evoke something like love. Yes, it’s oddly disjointed, all four narratives do add up to a cohesive total, but reluctantly, tentatively, almost as an afterthought…it only really works in retrospect, now having finished the book the entire picture is so obvious. The omniscient narrator, the alternating timelines, the different families. There is a grand design at work, it just takes patience to reveal. There are layers, fascinating, poignant layers, small tragedies, quiet devastations, humble quests for a place in life, regular (exceptionally likeable in fact) characters trying their best in difficult circumstances. The tale of a woman who quietly slips away from her family and disappears into a cult was particularly effective. Maybe this book for me wasn’t what it was for other readers, some reviews seem to suggest this. I think the trick is to accept the disorderly narrative and just enjoy the quiet beauty of it. The writing really is terrific. If each of the story components was a Lego brick, would this story hold up? In a way, yes, but it would be a strange asymmetrical creature. Then again those are often the most striking. So this might be an acquired taste sort of thing and might not have a universal (puns, puns, sorry) appeal, but it held me in a near hypnotic sway with its strange loveliness or maybe its lovely strangeness. Very enjoyable read.

In her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan wrote of a time when people could still get lost. She was speaking of the time before social media and search engines, when a friendship once tight could completely disintegrate over the years, a person once close to you becoming just a husk of a memory. In Universal Harvester, John Darnielle sets much of his story near the end of that time and takes the thought a step further, reminding us that there was a time when a person could willfully disappear. It may sound odd to a younger person, especially in an era where there is actually a game show that dares contestants to do just that and in which it seems to be a very difficult task to accomplish. Universal Harvester was a thought provoking reminder that the burden was once on the searchers.

I don't want to rehash plot. I do want to give credit to Darnielle for a quite unique and angst inducing start to this novel. Set in a local video store just prior to the time when every such store would be put out of business by superior technology and methods of delivery, Darnielle uses a small town and ordinary people to build a mystery that seems to hold possibilities for violence and terror on a small but local scale. This Anytown, USA setting translates to a "this could happen to you" feel that I found both frightening and thrilling.

After building suspense, the novel takes a turn toward the philosophical as the story moves backward and forward in time with themes of loss, memory, loneliness and belonging. I like it when a novel takes me places I had neither expected nor intended to go and here is where Universal Harvester succeeds. It's thought provoking, strange and outré. I thought I'd stood in line to enter a haunted house, but I was actually headed to Wonderland.

Note: Free ARC received from publisher via NetGalley

Universal Harvester (FS&G, 2017) by John Darnielle is ultimately an uneven “horror” novel that, while well-written, will leave readers at the end of the story cocking their head to the side and going, “Huh.” Not in a confused sort-of way, but, rather, “I don’t know what to think about this.”

The story depicts a group of films at an old-school rental store (a majority of this story takes place on the cusp of Y2K) that, inexplicably, have patches of another movie sewn through. The novel unfolds in the past, the 1990s, and the “present”.

The problems with this novel begin with the depiction of the “scenes” in the regular movies. They’re described as upsetting the viewer, but, ultimately, they’d at most be described as bizarrely mundane, with only one scene–a woman sprinting away from the camera, down a dirt road at night–that could be construed as frightening. The rest, even when some violence like punching are kicking is thrown in, come off as…hum drum. Weird, but not like watching a snuff film. Still, the characters have a visceral aversion to the scenes, even as they become fixated on the shots, and that can lead to disconnect with the reader.

Ultimately, a majority of the mystery is explained–Darnielle points the reader in the right direction, but leaves it to you to figure it out. That can leave some readers disappointed and some satisfied; it all depends on how detailed you like your maps drawn.

When the novel works, it does so with the familial relationships–Jeremy and his father, or the present-day family that discovers the tapes–showing the space and tension and isolation that trauma, or witnessed-trauma, can have between loved ones. The plot line that focuses in the past is, probably, the most emotionally and intellectually satisfying because it’s the most realized. More, the novel’s horror elements, to this reader, come from the sense of being stuck, or left behind–by parents, by choices, by lifestyles and friends. This helplessness powers the engine for the novel’s unsettled tendencies.

Ultimately, Darnielle writes in an easy, forward manner–lyrical at times, but never to the point of pretentious obfuscation or incoherence. You enjoy hearing his voice. Still, the melody he creates doesn’t seem to reap the rewards of a musical pay-off (and I’ll stop with the musical comparisons now, thanks).

I absolutely loved Universal Harvester, but understand it might not be for everyone. Readers must embrace a fair bit of ambiguity and "horror" is an inaccurate description. However, these reasons made John Darnielle's second novel that much more impressive to me. Darnielle does an amazing job of building suspense and a sense of dread without blatant violence. The reader is quickly drawn into a moody web, and an escalating desire to know what is REALLY on those video tapes.

The novel is divided into four parts. The first part of the book creeped the heck out of me in a delightful way. The sections that follow feature detours and segments which simultaneously raise and release tension. The fourth and final part detours again, but deftly completes the circle and offers a fresh lens through which to view the previous events.

I thought the narrative threads--saturated with personal loss and tragedy--were tied off sufficiently and that the conclusion was quite satisfying. We're given enough brush strokes to fill in remaining white space on our own. Darnielle's writing was somehow subtle and quiet, yet dense with imagery and emotion. Slow down and enjoy the scenic country ride. And then open a "Beast" and pop a video in the VCR!

This book is not at all like the descriptions. Not a mystery, horror or scifi. That is my first problem with it. If you have to lie to get people to buy it then there is a problem. His writing is beautiful. I enjoyed the glimpses into mid-western small town life. Both of those things cannot overcome the lack of a story that comes together in the end. It switched back in forth in time and writing style so often it was hard to follow. That could be forgivable if it paid off in the end but it did not. I want a story to make me think but you need to at least answer the major questions that make it a story. I regret buying this book and I would not recommend it.

A literary vinette about sudden personal loss and urban decay that was mistakenly marketed as a horror novel. Make no mistake i enjoyed the writing and loose freeform style narration but i was ultimately dissapointed.
There really is no resolution, what is intially set up as a mystery about creepy footage spliced into rental movies has no pay off.
The personal stuff was geniune and well written but it loose approach to structure means none of the characters get arcs, the central theme kinda just peters out halfway through and nothing is resolved.

This is closer to poetry than prose and any pretense at horror is a thin veneer over a solid story about personal grief.
If thats your thing then go nuts but just don't be fooled like i was.

I absolutely loved John Darnielle's first novel "Wolf in White Van." It was an unusual yet unforgettable novel with a fascinating protagonist and a non-linear but still engrossing storyline, and it made me eager to read more by this author. I hadn't heard any of the songs he's written (he's apparently in a band called The Mountain Goats and writes a lot of lyrics), but when I came across his second novel, "Universal Harvester," I snapped it up. Its summary made it sound like a horror novel or something out of a "Criminal Minds" episode, but I had enough faith in the author to give this one a shot.

All I can say is... I haven't been this let down by an author's second novel since Ernest Cline's "Armada." The prose in "Universal Harvester" is still harshly beautiful, but the story is a hopeless mess.

"Universal Harvester" takes place in the small town of Nevada, Iowa, home to the Video Hut, a small video rental store in the late 1990s that's struggling to do business. Jeremy, a young man who works in the store while trying to decide what to do with the rest of his life, doesn't see much excitement in his hometown... until customers bring back movies and complain that there are strange scenes inserted into the tapes. And these scenes are frightening -- heavy breathing in the darkness, hooded figures in rickety sheds, women fleeing for their lives through corn fields... At first Jeremy wants no part in this, but soon both he and the video-store owner are investigating the tapes, and their quest will draw them into the life of a woman with a haunted past... and mark several lives forever in startling ways.

Sounds like an exciting premise, doesn't it? Finding new home-movie footage spliced into rental VHS tapes would be a brilliant premise for a crime or horror novel, and one review of this book even hails it as a homage to Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood" and Hideo Nakata's "The Ring." But that comparison is horribly misleading, and anyone going into this book expecting a thriller or a fright-fest is going to be very disappointed. The book is more of a noir (one website describes it as "rural noir") than anything else, and rather than dwelling on the mystery of the tapes seems more concerned with exploring the lives of its characters and the losses they've suffered in their pasts. Which isn't all bad, I suppose, but misleading the reader into thinking they're getting a thriller in order to get them to read is unfair.

Darnielle's prose in "Wolf in White Van" was gorgeous, with a strangely stark beauty that kept me entranced throughout. And for the most part that beauty continues in this book. But it gets muddled in places with strange shifts in POV, switching from third to first person at odd times and even mixing up its tenses for what seems to be no reason. Also the author keeps making references to alternate timelines for some reason, which wouldn't be uncalled-for in a science fiction novel but serves no purpose here except to confuse the story further.

Speaking of confusing, there are WAY too many characters and plotlines in this book. Halfway through we suddenly switch from Jeremy and Sarah (his boss) to the story of a woman whose tale seems totally unrelated to what's going on in the main story. Then after another interlude with Jeremy, the author throws in ANOTHER bunch of characters and rather sloppily ties them into the story. Everything attempts to tie together at the end, but it feels more like a snarl than a neatly tied-up plot. And I really can't bring myself to care about any of these characters, tragic losses in the past notwithstanding.

SPOILER BELOW

As for the main mystery of who's splicing scenes into the tapes and why... we learn the WHO early on, but the WHY is never properly explained. How would the character's missing mother account for her splicing random scenes into rental tapes anyhow? And why is Sarah serving as her accomplice? And why are we supposed to sympathize with Lisa when she's not only acting in a baffling way, but actively threatening and hurting other characters in the process? If you go into this expecting good answers to the underlying mystery, you're going to be very disappointed.

While the failure of "Universal Harvester" doesn't make me love "Wolf in White Van" any less, I can't help but wonder just where it all went wrong. There was a lot of potential in this book, and its unfortunate that such a great premise and a gorgeous cover were wasted on... this. I can only hope that "Universal Harvester" was a misstep, and that Darnielle's next work will be a return to form.

This "book" is a boring treatise on mood and place that has almost no story to speak of. The minimal suspense created early is slowly deconstructed as the book goes along. The "writer" shows some promise, but the "story" gets more boring as it goes along, with way too many useless words that do nothing to further anything, and the book is short! Could have been a novella and still had too many words. I skipped a lot of the second half of the book trying to get to some kind of denouement, but there isn't one. It does accomplish a certain sense of loss and moodiness, but it isn't a narrative. Complete waste of time.

I JUST finished reading this novel. The mood of it is going to stay with me for awhile. As an Iowan, the author's setting and descriptions of small town Iowa are brilliant.

There are several distinct parts in this slim volume, but it does all come together in the end. The characters do converge, although it doesn't seem that they will as the story progresses.

Sinister video clips suddenly appear on videos at Nevada's Video Hut. Jeremy, an employee at the Video Hut, is unsettled by these clips and eventually decides it's necessary to investigate. The story, told from the perspective of multiple characters, both past and present, lead the reader on what seems to be a journey down a rabbit hole. What are the clips, where did they come from, and why are they showing up on random videos available for rent from the Video Hut?

This is a story about love, loss, and always hope. I read it in one sitting.

This novel by the Mountain Goats frontman John Darnielle is fairly well-written, but its weird 90s midwestern gothic vibe doesn't really work for me. (The comparison that keeps coming to mind is the old show Twin Peaks, which I gave up on in frustration after the first few episodes. If you liked that series more than I did, you might enjoy this book as well.)

The story begins when a video store clerk starts noticing strange home footage recorded over some of the cassettes, but after this promising start, we're introduced to a lot of tangential plots, opaque character logic, and ultimately unanswered questions. The few resolutions that do come are not particularly satisfying, so although individual passages are effective in isolation, the novel as a whole just feels disjointed.

An all-time favorite of mine, though I can understand it isn't going to appeal to everyone. The highlight is definitely the language and atmosphere of the work, which testifies to the author's history as a lyricist. This work plays with and subverts the tropes of puzzle-box horror stories, and in doing so may leave genre fans disappointed, but it certainly opens up onto interesting ruminations in the process. The setting is a richly evoked rural Iowa, beginning at a local VHS rental store in the 1990's, and the story is very aware of the awkward intersection between historical and contemporary that its subject material occupies, while also exploring both sides of this temporal divide in later acts as if to try to offer some impossible sense of closure.

If the structure of Darnielle's previous novel, Wolf in White Van, can be thought of as inverted (with one narrative thread told chronologically, the other in reverse), then Universal Harvester can be thought of as a spiral, or a widening gyre, rending itself apart as the work progresses. While I was left perplexed after an initial reading, I will say that this work has amply rewarded multiple revisitations as few others have, and for that reason I highly recommend it, especially to fans of weird fiction.

I never got comfortable while reading John Darnielle’s novel titled, Universal Harvester, and maybe that was the point. Rural Iowa seemed at first an unlikely place for a mood of menace and foreboding. But in every place there is loss to experience, there is grief, there is some form of menace. I remained uncomfortable as Darnielle changed story lines, moved backward and forward in time, and maintained a mood of loss and of being left behind. Darnielle uses the importance of image as key to the novel. From altered VCR tapes, viewers and readers can see for themselves as Darnielle puts it, “…people and places and things that might otherwise go unnoticed.” The images bear witness for those who weren’t left behind. From the title through the conclusion, I felt part of meditation on mortality, and I felt the lingering presence of death of some form or another, always ready to bring in the crops, present company included.

Rating: Four-star (I like it)

Well, color me fascinated. I picked Universal Harvester from the library shelf, thought it looked interesting, and that was that. It's a longer read than it looks because each page is full of information, insight, and questions that you decide to probe, some for a minute, some longer. I didn't find the novel creepy at all, just interesting. Sure, I wondered where it was going, but finally just set back and went with it. The author has so many observations worth pursuing, and he definitely left me wondering. Can I ask more from a novel? Oh, you mean plot? Well, in some fashion, there is one. I'll venture to say it's about finding lost parts of Iowa, or life. You pick.

This book wouldn't have been so big a disappointment if it had been properly marketed as a brooding, contemplative examination of loss, but as a horror novel it really, REALLY sucks. I waited 211 pages for a big, cool reveal that would make it all worthwhile only to find out in the last few pages that no reveal was coming because....that's life! F you,book.

Rarely does a book unnerve me, but John Darnielle's latest, UNIVERSAL HARVESTER, does just that. Throughout the novel, I was under the impression that I was being given a glimpse into the most private parts of the characters' lives, and although much of the action was relatively mundane, I could not stop turning the pages late into the night. Normally, any read that accomplishes that will garner a 5 star review from me but the final revelation fell a bit flat when it finally came to light..

Written by John Darnielle, the front man for The Mountain Goats, Universal Harvester is creepy, suspenseful, and ultimately heartbreaking. A video shop clerk finds disturbing images spliced onto the VHS movies the store rents to customers. Investigation into the origins of these images leads in unpredictable directions. In the end, this is a story of parents, children and the expectations they hold of and for one another. Told by an unreliable narrator, the story moves backward and forward in time. While it sometimes takes the reader a minute to grasp where and when the action is taking place, it adds to the fascination of the story.

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle is a free NetGalley ebook that I read in mid-January.

The real star of this book is not its ominous appeal, spot-on Midwestern personality assessments, and sotto-sad descriptions of paths not taken or choices not made, but the all-knowing, mildly retrospective narration that is more gloomy than Our Town, but also slightly more devious than American Beauty.

One star for good writing style, one star for building a great sense of mystery and dread...for a while. Then the book starts to "like" itself too much. If you have to say, "This could have happened or that, but this book doesn't do that" instead of working that into the flow of the work, you may need to go back and start over. This could have been a Bradbury-esque 25 page story (with a creepy cliff hanger of knowing dread), or it could have been (and I would have loved it to be) 500 pages long to flesh out all of the story lines that were started and abandoned.

Well this was certainly a weird book! The writing style was unusual - and I haven't decided yet whether I liked it or not. I didn't quite see the purpose of 'the story could have gone this way - - or it could have gone that way'. Huh? I kept waiting for something to happen after all the buildup! I didn't hate the book - but it was just ok for me. I'm scratching my head at all the rave reviews.

The prose is beautiful and at times terrifying, but it gets a little tricky to bridge the gap between the stories to make sense to the context of what is actually on the tapes. It's there, but was vague to the point that it took away from some of the horror and narrative cohesion. This could have been a five star book if it tied the threads together a little more tightly.

Universal Harvester poses as a psychological thriller, but it's more than that (and less) - a paean to the understated stoicism of the midwest, a psychological exploration of loss, yearning, and the muted sturm & drang of small town America. It's less of a whodunit and more of a whydunit, and it's less about the characters - who could be anyone - than it is about the thoughts and motivations of humans moving through their lives, encountering situations both everyday and strange.
I listened to the audiobook on Audible, with John Darnielle himself reading, and (as with Wolf in White Van) I'm not sure that there's a better way to experience this story. Darnielle's vocal skill is tremendous, the amount that he is able to convey with a pause, the unspoken detail, the speed and inflection of his voice - it adds layers to the already complex, introspective, eloquent writing.

Universal Harvester is the most chilling type of horror novel, one that replaces the terror of the chainsaw wielding maniac with the soul destroying dread that is an inseparably part of our existence as emotional beings. Also, the book amazingly functions as a heart warming coming of age tale, and a testament to the power of human kindness.

I wanted to like this book. The core plot premise is intriguing: someone is editing rented VHS movies. These edits include the inserting of disturbing and crudely recorded fragments seemingly filmed in the surrounding area. A commercial Hollywood film is interrupted, for example, with a short scene depicting a person with a hood over their head, while standing in a small shed. This scene is written with delicious detail. It's Creeeepy... and an intriguing setup for a mystery or horror novel.

But that's not what we get.

What we get is a confusing, fractured narrative that focuses on everything but the central premise. We learn about the lead character's job hunt. We read about a widowed man's starting a new relationship and his therapy journal. Ho hum. These incidents might make intriguing fiction on their own, as a coming-of-age story or a recovery-from-grief novel. But what do they have to do with creepy VHS movies? I don't know, and the author makes no effort to tie these threads together. Darnielle has an English degree, but his education apparently didn't include the fundamentals of storytelling and motivation that have been at the center of drama since Aristotle.

I gave up after about 75 pages. Without giving away too much for those who haven't read the book, here's why I gave up. At one point, a character views the disturbing edited VHS movies and is certain he recognizes someone he knows. This should be a turning point in the novel. This moment should be where the story pivots into act 2, providing increased tension and motivation and spurring the characters forward to learn how this person appeared in the edited film. But that doesn't happen. The characters go about the story as if someone near and dear to them wasn't involved in disturbing, clandestine low-fi film making for God only knows what unsettling reason.

It was difficult to take the novel seriously after this section. I was reminded of Tommy Wiseau's so-bad-its-good movie The Room (2003). At one point, a character in the film announces out of the blue that she has breast cancer. This disclosure ought to be a turning point in the movie, at least the introduction of a sub-plot. But her cancer diagnosis is never mentioned again, and the movie plugs along as if her announcement never happened.

Best of luck to Darnielle with his band. But I probably won't be reading any more books he writes.

Time, characters, events all hopped around as if the reader was meant to be confused. I felt challenged to find any part of it compelling but instead it was disjointed and not interesting enough to keep my attention.

This book was hard to follow and had an unsatisfying ending. The narrator would launch into random pages long "love letters" to Iowa and the old Midwest between story points. I hardly ever finish a book and think it was not worth reading...this book falls into that category. It is an unstaifying suspense novel.

Time, characters, events all hopped around as if the reader was meant to be confused. I felt challenged to find any part of it compelling but instead it was disjointed and not interesting enough to keep my attention.

This book was hard to follow and had an unsatisfying ending. The narrator would launch into random pages long "love letters" to Iowa and the old Midwest between story points. I hardly ever finish a book and think it was not worth reading...this book falls into that category. It is an unstaifying suspense novel.

The writing was decent. But it seemed like the author took a frightening premise and devolved it into a confusing and bland story about Midwest families and loss. It was also extremely confusing in parts and I didn’t feel a sense of closure at the ending. Disappointed.

Wow, what a huge disappointment. I had to reread the last 2 pages 3 times to make sure I hadn't missed the wonderful reveal I was sure would be SOMEWHERE! Nothing....
The author writes beautifully, but his plot development sucked.

Great story that kept me guessing. Darnielle has obviously spent some time in the midwest because he nails some of the patterns and thoughts perfectly. Who knew a great musician could also be a great author?

One word, creepy. This book is CREEPY, but with another word, it was GREAT. I am a huge fan of creepy, and finding an author that can do it successfully is a rare jewel. Growing up, I always had a fascination with scary. Not gory, scary. My brother’s and I would want to watch horror movies, and since my parents didn’t think the current movies were appropriate, we got to watch old, black and white horror. We watched the original Fly and The House on Haunted Hill. Hitchcock was a staple, and Abbot and Costello were comedic relief if something got too scary. I am forever thankful for this black and white exposure because it meant that I learned an appreciation for what is truly scary: suspense, the unknown, what is behind closed doors, what you can’t see, noises, reactions. Scary isn’t blood, scary is confusion. All of these things are present in Universal Harvester. When you start reading, your inner movie starts with a sepia toned filter shooting a bored, video store clerk in the dreary Midwest. When a customer complains about a movie cutting out and being recorded over, you can see the blank look on his face as he takes the tape and sets it aside for later viewing. When he takes it home, pops in the VHS and begins to play the bad 90s movie, you are reading closely, not wanting to miss a word of what he’s going to see. The image cuts out and you can imagine the cockeyed camera angle and the strange silence and images. The writer illustrates all of these scenes so perfectly that it requires little imagination to play these scenes like a reel in your head. Good, legitimate scary books are hard to come by and I was thrilled to have a little variety in my reading material.

This book started out strong, and continued through until the last section. Maybe it’s my perception of it, but the ending left me unsettled. That said, halfway through I could not put it down! Not sure the author actually had a good plan to begin with.

Review of John Darnielle’s book Universal Harvester. Published Feb 7, 2017. This review is based on the audio book read by the author.
Reviewed by John White

NOTICE: This reviews contains spoilers. If you haven’t read or listened to it by now, tick tock. Seriously, I really liked the book and I hope you will too.

Darnielle’s Universal Harvester and Hitler’s Mein Kampf are both narrated by someone deeply traumatized who struggles with staggering personal loss. Their struggle to overcome unspeakable hurt becomes a defining trait of their identity. The former is about loss of a parent and a sense of home and the latter is about the loss of one’s parents, the perceived loss of one’s country and homeland, and pointing the blame. In Harverster, there’s no one to blame for the sadness, only coping with the void. Both narrators struggle to make sense of their pain by hurting others and call it help. For the former, harassing hooded strangers in a shed, for the latter, genocide and lebensraum (German “living space”) flavored with German Idealism. In both cases, if they don’t hurt their victims physically, they hurt them psychologically. Ordinary events fill the victims with dread and they hope that if left alone, the insanity will resolve itself and life with go on as before. For the novel, the protagonist (Jeremy) seek to justify and enable the antagonist’s (Lisa) desperate attempt at emotional catharsis. For the National Socialist regime, different social strata identified with various parts of Hitler’s two volume rant on why multi-culturalism is bad, Germans lost World War One, and how the Germans could regain their national self-respect. Well-intentioned but emotionally scarred and proud people inadvertently permitted the annihilation of tens of millions of people because they wanted to help their country and themselves. That’s where the similarities end and let’s never speak of it again. Comparing anything with Hitler’s warped and hateful ‘World-Concept’ (his term was Weltanschauung) is like bringing a gun to a knife fight. Don’t reference it unless you understand the concept and don’t mind shooting yourself in the foot.

Darnielle speaks the way Edward Hopper paints. The scenes are of everyday middle America with a sense of vague unease lurking beyond the picture’s frame. The setting of Harvester is wholly in small towns and farmland between Eastern Nebraska and Iowa. Hopper uses washed out colors and empty scenes to convey the unspoken. When there are people in the scenes, they’re always alone, even when with others. They are merely props on the canvas for the real depth is in the places themselves. To the viewer, this conveys a sad alienation. Unlike Hopper, Darnielle lets the people take center stage without diminishing the locale’s role in the story. The settings exist and they enable the characters to breath with their mystery intact. Darnielle’s use of irreducible spaces gives life to the country most Americans will never see. However, what is witnessed and remembered is dutifully preserved through family histories told over holiday dinner tables, with the cameras of those passing through, and with writing like the novel Universal Harvester.

This book is beautifully written and hauntingly read by Darnielle from the beginning to the heartfelt and unsettling end. The plot’s main conflict is that disturbing home movies are being spliced into commercial movies available a small video rental store in rural Iowa. The retail clerk (Jeremy), the store owner, and a customer all seek in different ways to uncover the truth of the footage. The plot’s overarching themes are of grief over the loss of a parent. For one character, their mother died in a car crash when they were a teenager. For another, their mother disappeared when they were a child. How their fathers struggled to maintain a sense of normalcy and how the children internalized their father’s behavior makes all the difference. Near the end of the book, Lisa makes a speech rationalizing her actions. It’s a heartfelt speech and the reader or listener is genuinely moved. I was. Its only after some thought that we stop and think, ‘wait, did she just gloss over the most puzzling and criminal part of her behavior? Did we just condone what she did because we felt sorry for her? Did we the reader just get fooled along with the characters?’ Yes. Yes. And Yes. Due to Darnielle’s masterful and poetic storytelling, the reader’s personal feelings become part of the plot. The characters are disturbed by the video edits and we are disturbed by our sense of being duped (The rise of National Socialism also couldn’t have happened without audience participation.).

After I finished listening to this book, I felt Jeremy, Jeremy’s dad, and Lisa are really out there even now, living in Navada, Collins, or Tama, Iowa. I felt that if I went to thrift stores there today, I’d find those altered VHS tapes. This sense of realness is due in part to the sparse writing style of the author and in part to the universal themes he investigates. The author is a song writer and knows that a few well-chosen words can describe a scene better than long descriptive paragraphs. The main characters are given a life of their own and secrets left intact. The reader or listener cares because the characters cared about one another. Small towns have a way of protecting their own and not prying too much into one’s personal life. If someone needs a friend, several are readily available to help even if it puts their own well-being in danger. This book reflects that.
The book isn’t without its faults. Some of the characters seem like mere plot devices or obvious red herrings and I keep expecting them to show larger purpose, but they don’t. Sometimes the author relies on the reader’s acceptance of the character’s judgments or a scene is left too vague. If a particular character sums up some extremely disturbing event as “she’s hurt”, that’s all the reader gets and we the objective public remain unsatisfied. The momentum of the early chapters halts suddenly and shifts to a background story of characters we at the time feel are unnecessary. The backstory takes 1 hour out of the 6 total hours of the audio book. The side story is quaint, touching, and poignant on its own, but I kept thinking, ‘And about those videos…’. Eventually the side story merged with the initial story and I realized the video splicing from the book’s publisher is just a hook. The real story is much more original and unsettling. I’d also slight the book a bit because of some unnecessary poetic flourishes describing objects or moods. These are minimal though, and I liked them for themselves. My criticism is the momentum of the plot lags sometimes so I hope the reader enjoys the fragmentary reflections. I did.

What makes a good book great is how it lingers in the mind after one has finished reading it. It’s the impression it makes. If the drama is all resolved and there are no more questions and nothing left to tell, then why should I remember the book? If I liked some of the characters or a few turns of phrase, maybe I’ll remember those lines for a little while. But a great book has more questions than answers whether in trying to ‘decipher’ the plot’s nuance or comparing those nuances within the book to films referenced. Inside the relatively short text (6 hours for an audiobook is half the typical audiobook length. Hitler’s tedious diatribe is a numbing 27 hours.) are different parallels between the protagonist and antagonist, between the ‘crimes’ of the antagonist and the movies the home footage is spliced in. One of the first movies is “Targets”, which briefly is about an emotionally damaged Vietnam vet who comes home from the war, kills his family, and goes on a shooting spree at a movie theater. When he’s caught, he wonders if he’ll make the evening news. It’s a very stylized and public display of an inconceivable inner wound. How does that compare to the motives and methods of the Harvester’s chief villain? In Lisa’s final monolog, she admits offhand that the films weren’t always chosen randomly. Sometimes she picked certain films and deliberately spliced in certain home footage. Another parallel is how the itinerate nature of her childhood contrasts to her home films. How her, at times, criminal insanity serves to achieve mastery over her trauma. How she views her work as bearing witness to the anonymous lives of the Midwest, to her mother’s absence, to her own life. Without her home movies, her video splicing, and desperate re-watching of old surveillance footage in search for her lost mother, her life would also be anonymous and lost. Her single minded focus is her only claim to Midwestern life origins. If we deny her the expression or ‘witness’ of her grieve, does she cease to exist?

Years after the main action takes place, a family of newly arrived residents find the video tape of Jeremy and track him down for some explanation of what they’ve seen. He replies that he doesn’t want them to write him anymore, but gives them the address of the person behind the camera. He says, “I know you have many questions, but you should leave her alone. I know you won’t, but you should.” Throughout the novel, Darnielle presents an unsettling detective story mixed with a presentation of personal grief. He shows how a family copes with the loss of the mother, how they grieve, and how they try to redeem the mother’s memory. He respects his subjects enough to give them room for their emotions despite the consequences. The ending places the reader into the story, acknowledges that we want the big reveal, but we don’t get it. Jeremy believes the search for answers should be dropped. John Darnielle does too.

John Darnielle has a superb author's voice. Regardless of the subject, plot, or POV, he is a joy to read. While reading this book, I felt like I was in a room with a friend who is also a master storyteller.

This book is challenging; the last sections switch POV and tense, and scenes change as often as a quick-edit film. If you are patient and give it the attention it requires and deserves, you will be rewarded.

Thank you John Darnielle for breaking the rules and writing exactly how you want to. I can't wait for the next one.

I really disliked this book... So much that I found my motivation in completing by coming here and leaving 1 star. It was all over the place, timelines all over the place, people all over the place, never introduced then taken away, no true resolve at the end.... waste of time...

Sets up the first part well, then fails to follow through. The only reason I finished this is was short, and even then I skimmed to the end when I realized it was going nowhere. A compelling, mysterious setting and some good writing are not enough to overcome a lack of plot development.

Without a doubt, this is one of the strangest books I've read in awhile. It's really engrossing, but disjointed at the same time. I read it in one day with breaks from it, and felt a little unnerved when I'd stop. It stayed on my brain, but I'm really not even completely sure what just happened. I'm glad that I'm not alone, reading the reviews for it. Parts of it definitely gave me the creeps. The book often switches perspectives abruptly right as you think you're getting somewhere.

Jeremy likes his job at the Video Hut. It's comfortable, and he doesn't have to do much. There's usually hours after opening where no one comes in at all, then there's a rush when the people of the small Iowa town get out of work and come in search of movies, then he goes home to spend time with his dad. His mother died years ago, and he and his dad have a comfortable routine with each other, having dinner and settling down to watch a film. Most days are the same, until two customers complain of their movies being interrupted by something strange. Strange black and white scenes shot in a barn are spliced into the videos. They last a few minutes before going back to the regular movie. They are odd and certainly out of place, and become disturbing. He starts to investigate where they came from with one of the customers, as the owner of the video store suddenly starts coming around less and less after viewing the tapes.

I was given an ARC of this book from Net Galley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, thank you! My review is honest and unbiased.

It was a disappointment. The ending was disappointing which I understand it sometimes the point of a book, but it didn't work here.
Others have said the writing is beautiful... maybe a few sentences, but not the whole book.
If you're super interested in the synopsis from the book cover and think it sounds interesting, do what I did and get it from the library.

Plot is hidden and jumpy, as are the characters. It was boring, like watching paint dry, and I put it down more than once. Finished it only because of the glowing reviews, and wish I could get that spent time back. Entire book can be summarized in the last few chapters, and even then the final chapters are inconclusive.