A Dark Matter

"A Dark Matter" should have been entitled "A Dull Matter." It was dull, duller, dullest. A dustbowl of tedium. Although billed as a supernatural thriller, it is only marginally supernatural and certainly not thrilling. This was my first Peter Straub novel and perhaps will be my last. I resent having spent so many precious hours slogging my way through this book, hoping it would redeem itself and that I would be rewarded with a clever denouement, only to be further and finally disappointed by its lackluster finish. If you're looking for a classy, supernatural thriller, I recommend you look elsewhere. The only saving grace is that I borrowed this book from the library and didn't waste money as well as time.

where the past becomes more important than the present has long been the haunting ground of straub. literally every one of his novels deals with the suppurating cyst of unhealed trauma buried deep in the histories of his characters. none deal with it more so than this novel: a harrowing event during the late adolescence of its participants during the late sixties during a ritual in a meadow in the dark that left one dead, one insane, one blind is here finally revealed to the only one of those involved who opted out of joining his fellows for the experience. or not. i'll get to that. but first, the cast, because this is an eminently character driven novel.

i found all the characters detestable. well, except for the one named hootie, but hootie wasn't appealing to me, either. we've met him before, who's read straub: hootie is a variation of dick dart--the equally artificial antagonist of The Hellfire Club who instantly and perfectly remembered everything he read as well. howard "hootie" bly was the one driven crazy. he is a confection of a creation, sweet and enjoyable, but ultimately empty and composed entirely of his idiosyncrasies--an impossible memory for literature and speaking through fictive quotes to express himself.

the leader of the pack, heard about, but never quite seen, spencer mallon, who led the festivities in that meadow lo those many years ago, remains at the peripheries of the narrative, but exerts tremendous power as the macguffin of the plot. he is the catalyst for there to even be a story to tell. we've met spencer mallon before, too: mallon is a variation on mr. x, the antagonist of the eponymous novel--both characters spent time in their respective stories as gurus impressing an entourage of younger people during the sixties with their arcane magical knowledge to get laid.

you know what, forget about roll call. while the characters are vastly better drawn than mere "types," they really only serve to advance the narrative. so about that narrative: the template for this effort is simply an expansion and magnification of Ghost Story's chowder society whose gatherings to tell tales were the backbone of that novel and now are the backbone of this one. but where the members of that august crew are deeply complex and endearing and ultimately brave and kind, these people of this new novel are judgmental and off-putting--especially the feckless narrator and his wife. one of the reviewers here called him a "creepy little wine-sipper." that really captures it. the only character that came off as halfway decent was the one the creepy little wine-sipper and his self-absorbed wife wrote off as a bore.

this was an unsatisfying novel--not because it was tedious, i didn't think it was, and not because it was boring or predictable, i didn't think it was these things either, but because there all the while i had the terrible sense that this story really got behind its unpleasant narrator and his at least as unpleasant wife and their vapid little circle and the dubious tale of their experience. i understand what straub was doing here--he was carefully stalking the meadow event, slowly creeping up on it, to amplify the surreal sensation that it might have authentically taken place; the successive retellings by the interviewed survivors were meant to allow greater suspension of disbelief, growing in fantastical detail, preparing us for the final departure from reality of the last retelling.

this is not Rashomon--the versions did not in any way conflict which is the point of Rashomon--this is a narrative in decaying orbit around the dark matter. which actually is less a black hole of horror pulling everything toward it and more just gray water spiraling down the drain. there is nothing there at the center. just a story about a story that a handful of people told but which was never experienced by the narrator which leaves me, personally, unconvinced of having witnessed anything but a group of delusionals of grandeur living wasted lives as reported by a pompous middlebrow wordsmith. which may have been the point! which would be utterly brilliant. i doubt this was the intention, but i don't know. and this is because the ambiguity is a shade too thick for me. the only reference point that suggests that there truly was a supernatural occurrence that everyone truly did experience came in the form of a warning from one character to another whose portentousness was pounded into us only to be contradicted later by another participant who is later discredited by yet another, returning possible credibility, though the original warning could easily have been coincidental as such warnings usually are.

but if that's the case, if the tale at the heart of this story is meant to have actually taken place, then i feel it's a cheat. there is little sense of reward from cheapening the impact of such well wrought failures in life--as these characters powerfully are--with tacked on supernatural redemption. let me explain. genre fiction, horror fiction, particularly supernatural horror fiction, to use the jargon of the trade, "pays overhead." that is, the author of such work knows he must meet reader expectations and follow convention--but convention contradicts experience, so, to help with the suspension of disbelief, the author paves the way toward the fantastic brick by brick with the familiar, the recognizable and the authentic. after grounding the work, the narrative can then take a sharp left into the unreal and if the sense of reality is firm, that sharp left won't lose us. but sometimes, that establishment of the honest and the true is so expert and so deft, to depart it at all is to derail; the overhead is of greater value than the payload it purchases. if straub really means it here, that there really was a genuinely paranormal event these characters encountered, after creating such intensely realized characters, that payload is polystyrene peanuts packed in a rolls royce.

was i engaged? yes. entertained? i was. this book was good enough for me to wrestle with it afterward trying to discern its intent and not wasting time questioning its obvious quality. this was an ambitious novel. i just wanted something more. and i strongly suspect it just isn't here. peter? it's not you. it's me. i've changed. i think i grew up.

Peter Straub has become overly fond of listening to his own voice. He has always had that tendency, but in the past he was usually able to stick to an engrossing plot and move it along with the reader in tow. But with A Dark Matter Straub has indulged himself at the reader's expense. There are few things more frustrating than reading a very long book and feeling that nothing has happened that you did not learn from your initial reading of the dust jacket. Lots of very subjectivist onslaughts of fanciful imagery, visions, and vague psychological meanderings make this a very tedious book. One constantly feels as if one is patiently listening to an old friend babble on in great detail about something that seems completely irrelevant to everyone but himself, all the time wondering if there is going to be any actual point to it all, and being very disappointed in the end that, after all, there is not. I think poor Peter is badly in need of doing another collaboration with his buddy Steve King, who perhaps could bring him back to being a good storyteller again.

this book was good but not gripping, I managed to finish it because I wanted to know what happened, but not because I couldn't stop reading. I usually inhale books and finish them in 24 hours or less (I am a natural speed reader) this book took me about 5 days because I could walk away and leave it alone. overall the book is interesting and has some good twists.

This book was almost 600 pages of pointless wandering that didn't really amount to anything resembling an actual story. It was dull and boring, and if ever there was a point or plot to the thing I never saw it.

The writing style is very different and I found it hard to keep track of which character was saying what. I got somewhat accustomed to it after 20 pages or so. What was most difficult though was that the story was building too slowly. It would get to an interesting point and then fizzle at the end of each chapter. Very graphic scenes but very little movement in the plot. I struggled to pick it up each time and read more because I lost interest by the half-way mark. Then I put it down for good about 3/4's of the way through. There are more interesting books out there to spend my time on.

but because I have enjoyed other of Peter Straub's books more, it only gets four.

First I have to decide what I spent the last week reading. I suppose it was a story about what happened one Sunday night in a meadow in Madison, Wisconsin in June 1966 and how it affected the people that were there and the people that knew the people that were there.

As the book proceeds we learn more and more about the various characters. At various points the author drops hints about things in throw-away lines that the characters state obviously later on. The story kept me reading because I wanted to fill in the blanks. Some of the blanks stay blanks, but that really isn't a problem.

This is review is kind of like the book itself, only PS is a much better writer than I am. His other books are more linear, but I like the "electron cloud" effect this narrative takes. That is, PS writes around the story creating a certain mood. This book reminded me of his pre-Ghost Story works.

If you are truly a PS fan you will appreciate all the off-handed references to his other works he tosses into the story.

Bottom line - if you like your stories neatly tied up in a bow, you won't like this one. If you like stories that make you think, where you have to read carefully to catch everything because it will be important much later on when you know more about the story, you will love this.

Zero stars. Pointless drivel pretty much sums the whole thing up. Straub is just being pompous and arrogant with his writing skill, and it comes off boring and dull. There is literally, no plot, just five stories of what happened to a group of people, retold from their indivual points of view. It is bloated with big words and a meandering storyline that goes absolutely nowhere. Huge waste of time. I made audible gve me my money back. It was that bad.

Peter Straub's A DARK MATTER came out earlier this year. Readers who are familiar with Straub's work will be pleased with this newest story, that has been compared to Akira Kirasawa's RASHOMON. Like the 1950 Japanese crime mystery film, Straub's book unfolds through the various recollections of various adults about a strange and terrifying incident in a meadow, four decades earlier.
Refreshingly, Straub's work as a writer is hard to categorize, as his novels continue to evolve within and beyond various genres, from horror and fantasy to crime and suspense. Audiences seeking blood, gore, and gruesome grotesqueries on every page may be baffled by A DARK MATTER, which is written for a different kind of reader. One of the book's central characters, writer Lee Hayward, remarks early on about how writing should be read aloud, that stories are meant to be shared with others--not just read in silent isolation. One could say that this theme is developed by structuring the novel as a number of "stories" that the characters tell one Lee, as well as the central protagonist (Hayward) telling us. All of whom are created by Straub, the writer.
Such explorations into metafiction, and the nature of storytelling, are familiar to readers of Straub's past work, such as IN THE NIGHT ROOM, LOST BOY LOST GIRL, KOKO, and others. More than just telling tales that are horrorific more in the realm of HP Lovecraft than "Texas Chainsaw Massacre", Straub invites readers into a labyrinthine landscape of language, imagination, narrative, and symbology. His stories are richer, more nuanced, than other writers on the suspense / horror shelf of your local bookstore, as the evolution of character takes precedence over plot.
If you are already a fan of the author, I think you will see A DARK MATTER as a welcome and long-overdue treat, a pleasure that will involve you and keep you up at night. The story lingers long after your close the final page, and (typically) there is a great deal to ponder from the story--duality, the reliability of narrators, the nature of human choice, and a definition of evil.
If you are new to reading Straub's work, try to read the book without reading the dustjacket. Just plunge into the story, get caught up in the situations and circumstances of the characters. And, if you can, read passages of it aloud, preferably to another person. Many passages in the novel are rich, and are replete with Straub's droll and refreshing humor.

The only thing worse than reading 500+ pages of bad LSD trips is reading 500+ pages written by a guy who apparently has been on a bad LSD trip for 45 years.
I agree with the reviewer who said that Hootie is the only character worth a "star" in this whole mess and he is getting disability checks.
Everyone else was a minus 2, except for the obnoxious "Eel" (dear God, why would anyone name the "heroine" after one of the more repulsive creatures found
found in drainage ditches, without having any consciousness of how wonderfully apt that nickname was?).The serial killer(s) were bad, but not as thoroughly
annoying and morally dim as this all-seeing, albeit blind, awesomely attractive silver-haired little manipulator.
Unless it was her thoroughly insipid "husband" who looked enough like to be nicknamed "Twin." This creepy little wine-sipper is the narrator and he comes away
500+ later not one bit wiser than he started. He gets a minus 4.
The theme is Hell without Heaven, and also without a clue.
I was stuck on a boat with nothing else to read. Don't be as unfortunate as I was.

Peter Straub has an imagination both colorful and wide. "The Talisman" with Stephen King is one of the best and most complicated books I have ever read. "Black House" was great too. This story told from different view points of each character shows how in real life this relates. One message delivered to ten people and ten different messages are heard. There are some fresh ideas in this book. Each character's own search into their own fears is interesting. And how each of these character's lives continued to inter-twine since this horror-filled event in their teens parallels reality. I have read everything that Peter Straub has ever written.... however........this book failed to catch my interest completely. It wasn't the page-turner I am used to. I had to check this out of the library twice and push myself to get past the middle of the book. For some this read will be great. For me the story was so so.

I threw this book in the garbage after reading it. Nearly 600 pages of character development that never develops. I didn't relate to or care about any of these characters, nor was there any reason to believe they cared about each other. I imagine people have made more lasting friendships with strangers at a truck stop, or missed connections on craigslist. The personal accounts of a shared, life altering, horrific experience are either extremely boring or just poorly described. Unless you were homeschooled under a rock, nothing remotely "terrifying" (as Steven King described this book) ever happens. I've had strange/bizarre dreams that were far more terrifying than the glimpses of hell in this book. I only stayed the course because I thought at some point something even slightly terrifying might happen. It never does, not even close. Forget about horror. I'm going to go back to reading the horrible James Patterson "Alex Cross" series, at least that's entertaining, regardless how predictable it is.

What sounds like the makings for a very good story, turns out to be a series of long, boring interviews. The author's wife and friends are all present at this "life changing" event, and he wasn't. We do finally get to hear everyone's version of what went on, and in the end, it is hardly worth the wait of the drawn out, arduous read. Not sure if I will check out any of the author's other works PEH

Peter Straub's new novel, A Dark Matter, is about an event that happened in the past, in the sixties, with a group of high school teenagers and a mysterious man; a ritual that went terribly wrong, or perhaps exactly as guru Spencer Mallon planned. It is a story that appears simple and seemingly straight forward at first, but as the book continues, more details fall into place, things becomes more complicated, and the true horrors of that fateful night come to light.

Lee Hayward is a writer looking for something new and interesting to write about; a book unlike any of his others. He didn't participate the night of the ritual, not liking Mallon from the beginning, choosing to avoid him. But now, decades later, Lee wants to get to the bottom of the story and find out exactly what really happened. He meets with each of the surviving members - Hootie Bly, Dilly Olson, Jason Boatman, and his high school sweetheart who became his wife, Lee Truax - interviewing them in depth, to hear the different stories, and put all the pieces together. Hootie has just been released from a mental hospital, after what happened that night, while Lee has never fully confront his wife and asked for her confession.

On that night terrible things happened. A portal was opened between our world and another, and demons, beasts, or creatures were released; people died, slaughtered, reduced to pieces. Whether Mallon ever wanted this to happen, the reader will never really know, or for that matter, who this enigmatic man really was, but they will take a journey with Lee into the past, and along the way experience the horrific things these teenagers saw and felt, as well as try to find out the big why of it all.

Straub slowly gives out the pieces in a great growing mystery, as the reader learns more and more, but at the same time the horrors being revealed are hard to face and accept. But then confession is good for the soul, and when these people talk about what happened, it will ultimately make them feel human again, perhaps for the first time in many years.

Originally written on March 22nd 2010 ©Alex C. Telander.

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Nomadic charismatic guru Spencer Mallon arrives in Madison, Wisconsin accompanied by his beautiful lover Meredith Bright and subservient University of Wisconsin students, Keith Hayward and Brett Milstrap. The charmer invites several high school students which include Lee Harwell, his tomboy girlfriend, Lee "Eel" Truax, Howard "Hootie" Bly, Jason "Boats" Boatman, and Donald "Dilly" Olson to attend a night ritual. Before the sun rises, Hayward is dead and Bright vanished.

Over the years each has coped differently to that horrid night that changed all of them. Milstrap has avoided responsibility preferring Peter Pan to adulthood. The Lees married, but Eel has since lost her sight. Bly was taken to a mental institution on that horrific night and remains there while citing Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter as his only form of speech. Bright came out of whatever hole she had hidden inside of to marry into power. Boatsman went from shoplifter extraordinaire to shoplifting crime prevention extraordinaire. Filly Olson has never moved on. All will converge to relive what each chose to psychologically forget about that deadly night when novelist Harwell writes a nonfiction account of the horror that still impacts all of those who attended Mallon's malevolent ritual.

This is a convoluted but enjoyable horror thriller as Peter Straub keeps the audience guessing whether what happened was a group psychological hysteria or something evil from beyond. All of the survivors realize they do not have total recall of what occurred in spite of the college student's death. Although at times difficult to fathom what truly happened as murky memories make for a murky story line, fans who prefer something different will want to know what the students faced on the night that changed each of them.

Harriet Klausner

I had high hopes for a suspenseful, creepy novel but was sadly disappointed! The scenes describing the night the novel revolves around weren't spooky, scary or even that interesting. It reminded me of when my son decides to tell me about a dream in excruciating detail. But the big problem was the characters! I feel like they were cardboard cutouts of real people. There were backstories, but it didn't feel real and I never learned to care about any of the characters. It wasn't just that they were flawed -- I can't quite put my finger on it. I did read it to the end just for the sake of finishing it. Disappointed!

...that I wasted my time finishing this book and hoping that it would get better and make more sense. Usually, I will give up on a book that starts as obtusely as this one but I got sucked in by the author's reputation and kept plodding along hoping for improvement. I'm just thankful I checked it out from my local library instead of wasting money on a purchase. This one would definitely have been a better candidate for the publisher's reject pile.

I finally waded through this book hoping for at least a little payoff at the end. Needless to say, it wasn't there. A Dark Matter was as bland as they come. The only thing interesting character was "Hootie" as someone already mentioned. Another needless addition was that almost all of the seven or so characters had three names/nicknames. So trying to keep up with who is talking or who they are talking about for the first half of the book is exhausting and does not add anything to the story or character development. I will always have a soft spot for Straub because he co-wrote one of my all time favorites The Talisman. Do yourself a favor, and skip this one.

Excellent premise for a book but it completely fails to deliver. I was about 25% through and didn't even bother to finish it. Boring characters, plot development was weak. I don't know what happened at the end and I really don't care. This was my first book by this author. Maybe he has some well written books out there, but this is not one of those. Find another book.

I borrowed this from the library thank god. I struggled to the second chapter but finally gave up. I found the writing very juvenile & overdone. It didn't seem to go anywhere & I never figured out wth was going on. Loved the books Peter straub did with Stephen king so decided to try this...very disappointed :-/

I have never truly enjoyed a Peter Straub book, they all range between varying levels of pointlessness and dreariness. All of them have concepts that instantly grab attention, which is the reason why I keep buying and reading Peter Straub books with the hope that this one might just be satisfying, but the books themselves rarely go beyond their concept. All of this is true of 'A Dark Matter'. The plot has been described in other reviews, I would just add that the story goes nowhere.

How do you take a fairly uninspired short story about a bunch of hippies who accidentally open a portal to hell and turn it into a full length novel? Tell it over and over again from 5 different points of view. Throw in a cast of equally uninspired characters, a dash of gore (to offset the lack of scariness) and some big words like "obstreperous" and you've got the recipe for A Dark Matter. Ta da.

Gosh, the premise of this one sounded SO good: a bunch of kids follow their guru into a meadow, something horrible happens, and the ones that don't die or disappear emerge broken, blind or insane.... It's grim, but it sounds interesting, doesn't it? Sadly, the reality doesn't live up to the premise. The story never really gets moving. It just gets retold by each of the central characters with an extra detail here and there and with not so much as an "aha!" moment at the end. I can't quite put my finger on exactly what's missing here. It just isn't good... or scary... or spine-tingling...

What I CAN put my finger on is how one-dimensional the characters are. They are cut-and-pasted out of any nameless teen slasher movie: the hopelessly beautiful girl who doesn't do or contribute anything except being hopelessly beautiful, the menacing frat guy, the menacing frat guy's side-kick, the tomboy who's "just one of the guys," the handsome natural-leader guy. Blah blah blah. And of course every one of them has "daddy issues," which is why they fall for the spellbinding, father-replacing guru guy. Why is he spellbinding? Don't know, really. Even he isn't developed much beyond the fact that he looks like Indiana Jones.

There is one exception in this cast of pancake-flat characters... and that exception is Howard "Hootie" Bly. Driven insane by the events in the meadow, he spends his life in an asylum unable to communicate except in quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne. I was fascinated by Hootie Bly. In fact, Hootie alone was the deciding factor between the two star rating that I actually give this book and the one star rating that I considered giving it. Loved Hootie!

The Bottom Line: A lackluster, largely uninteresting read with one notable character. [This review originally appeared on my blog.]

The review blurbs all over this promised "terror" & "horror". It was boredom & repetitive nonsense, terrible characters, (not to mention their nicknames), & an over all anticlimactic ending. It came close to being the 2nd book in my reading career that I ever put down unfinished. Interesting premise, but falls flat.

I love Peter Straub. He brings such a wonderful literary flair to the horror genre. But this book...There were so many things that had great build-ups, not red herrings, but truly a build-up waiting for a climax--which never came. And there were several of these, which made it all the more noticeable and disappointing. It was wonderfully written, but felt incomplete.

As many reviews report, the plot is twisted and unfinished. The author writes well, its just that the plot becomes gibberish. One purple passage following another.

All in all, a frustrating read.

With ADM, it seemed that Straub was destined to take the same general premise as "It," but make it entirely his own (like Dan Simmons).. Given his credibility and recent releases (Bram Stoker winners ITNR and LBLG), and his uber-creepy "Ghost Story" it seemed as though this would be what one of the critics called a "Tour De Force." Unfortunately, that novel never actually made it to the publisher. Instead, we are stuck with this; a muddled, overly lengthy, and, quite frankly, boring novel from one of the better names in Horror/Suspense fiction.

The basic premise of the book is that 4 high school students and two college students (5 males, 1 female) are drawn into the world of Spencer Mallon, a "charismatic" individual who claims that he will be able to change the world, if even for a moment. They're, somehow, drawn into this creep's world, and before long something awful happens in a meadow on the outskirts of town; one person dies, Spencer flees, and the kids are irrevocably scarred for the rest of their lives.

What makes this book so maddeningly disappointing is that Straub is extremely capable of releasing top notch horror thrillers and the execution just didn't come close to matching the premise (or the praise). The story is largely told in flashbacks, but we follow around someone who didn't actually participate in the festivities, despite being close to the group. He's an extremely bland character, as are those that actually experienced the "terror;" furthermore, one of the main characters, Lee Harwell's wife "Eel," who becomes more "important" towards the end of the book, is a completely lacking character; she's blind, has developed uncannily strong senses to make up for this (not so hard to believe), and has somehow avoided discussing the event in detail with her husband throughout the years. Honestly, by the end of the book and through all the supposed suspenseful parts, it feels like whatever she has to say couldn't possibly be important enough to keep it from her husband ( and the reader) for so long.

I'd been waiting for months for this to be released; I've always been a fan of Straub, and this has got to be one of the most grave disappointments I've experienced since I started reading horror. This book must be an anomaly, because there is irrefutable evidence out there that Peter Straub is an incredibly talented author capable of novels of the highest caliber. Sadly, this is a big swing and an even bigger miss.

Life, and insanity, can turn on a dime. This superb film, with its amazing cast, proves that point. Black is a crack cop who has retired but can't leave his last, unsolved case aone. When he sees the pattern of the child murderer developing again, he uses his girlfriend's daughter to catch the serial killer. If you like intellectual films, you'll love this film. If you prefer slapstick comedies or other nonintellectual fare, leave it alone. You won't enjoy it; you won't understand it.

Once again, I spotted an interesting-looking book at a bookstore, brought it home, and now I regret it. Wish I'd double-checked the the store reviews first. In any case, there's nothing I can add that hasn't already been said in the many 1-star reviews here... in a nutshell, it was boring, silly and not the least bit scary.

Well, what--in All Honesty--can I tell you, ultimately about, "A Dark Matter?" In all likelihood, if you count yourself as a fan of Straub's, you will, Most likely, ENJOY the ride...whereas, if you're not a fan already, but have decided to read, "ADM," anyway...I predict you all will, Most likely, DISLIKE it. And that, in my opinion, is the Long AND the Short of it...

--todd gold

This book was very disappointing and I definitely don't recommend it. It was redundant in the story-telling and the only reason I finished it was to see if it ever got any better- it didn't! Don't waste your time on this book.

A bit slow to start, 'A Dark Matter" quickly turns: confusing, engrossing, and seriously entertaining.
This is not a book about heaven or hell, good or evil: rather it is about the eternal nature of duality. Absolutely fascinating and surprisingly sophisticated metaphysical ideas lurk behind the characters' rather self serving recollections.

Straub continues to disappoint. I know that is heresy, but this mismash of "questions not asked" and reperitious, padded descriptions of immemensly UN-frightening visions was incredibly boring. I wqaded thru it, hoping to find the Straub of "Ghost Story" and "Floating Dragon" but in the end was unsuccessful.

I bought this book because Stephen King said that it was "impossible to put down"...I was looking for a real page turner. Well, this ain't it. One of the worst books I've ever tried to read. Books like this one are the reason some people don't like to read...what a stinker.

This book was very convoluted and hard to follow. I kept waiting for something interesting to happen, I was sure it would since Stephen King gave this book his seal of approval. But I was grossly disappointed; the climax was very unsatisfying and I wish I hadn't wasted my time finishing the book!

Peter Straub succeeds only in showing his mastery of literature and grammar, and demonstrating his gifted ability to write...other than this, "A Dark Matter" was an extraordinary waste of time. A big disappointment. Shame on the publisher. I wonder how many good trees were wasted printing this book.

The writing here was good, but it never really came together for me. It seemed far removed from the energy of Straub's earlier novels like The Floating Dragon. I wills tick with STraub but hope he can bounce back a little. This seemed kind of run of the mill.

Stephen King is not to be trusted. He called this book terrifying and it was merely dull. All of theses characters waited thirty years to tell their story, and when they did it was just, eh. Why wait thirty years. There is not big revelation, just a lot of dull dreamy nonsense. It's too bad. I broke in my new Kindle with this book and I was deeply disappointed.

The year is 1966 in Madison, WI. Four high school students Hootie Bly, Dilly Olson, Jason Boatman, and Eel Truax, become enamored by Spencer Mallon, a charismatic guru who promises to introduce them to a "higher reality." During an occult ritual, something goes horribly wrong, killing one teen. The four friends are forever changed, each dealt with this horrid day in a different way. Hootie was taken to a mental institution. His only means of communication is quoting lines from Hawthorne's A Scarlet Letter. Eel marries Lee Hayward, her high school sweetheart, but she eventually loses her sight. Boatman, once a shoplifter, now runs his own theft prevention company. Dilly Olson never really got over the entire situation. Decades later the group comes back together when Hayward decides to write a non-fictional account of that afternoon. Each learns that their own personal account wasn't as accurate as they believed. This reunion is the first time they have had the opportunity to share their experiences with one another. Pieces of the puzzle are finally starting to come together to form a large, broad picture.

Once again, Straub does an outstanding job. A Dark Matter is purely character-driven; the book is broken up into several parts, each devoted to detailing the account of each of the main characters. Readers are transported thirty years in a matter of pages. I was impressed at how smoothly this transformation flowed. There is potential for the novels with character-driven storylines, specifically ones with as many characters as A Dark Matter, to seem drawn-out and exaggerated. I did not feel that in this case, for I do not think the overall "feel" of the novel would have carried through had it not been for the varying and differing accounts of each of the characters.

Those demanding a defined and definite resolution might be disappointed, however I think this aspect is what makes this such an amazing book. I takes an extremely talented writer to do what Straub has done with this one: giving detailed explanations of one situation from various standpoints, yet still leaving the actual event quite vague. Highly, highly recommended book.

I like Straub's stories. At the risk of belittling what I'm sure was his typical strenuous effort in creating this work, i have to say that This one was a little long, and not as engaging as his usual stuff...

Great book . Although very deep - horror / literature . Probably a bit tougher ( or a lot ) than your average James Patterson fare . Hence the negative reviews . Highly recommended to those that like a little absinthe in their sea breeze .