The Night Strangers – Chris Bohjalian

I want to like Chris Bohjalian.  Rather, I like him.  I just don’t like his books.  Rather, I liked Midwives, and I liked The Double Bind, and there must have been others…but I’ve been disappointed with him lately, and it makes me sad.  I think he must be a really cool guy – a true intellectual, a Renaissance man hanging out in the mountains, conducting all sorts of background research into all kinds of crazy stuff.  I once read an interview with him, and no, I cannot quote it exactly, but I recall a discussion on how he chooses his subject matter.  It seems that the prevailing wisdom in writing is to write about one’s own experience:  most writers write about what they know.  Conversely, Bohjalian chooses to write about what he wants to know.  So, if he wants to learn about midwifery, or dowsing, or veganism, or transsexuality, or homeopathy, then that’s what he centers his novel around.  I feel like this is a novel (heh) approach to novel writing, and I applaud it, in theory.  (It’s his practice that is the problem.)  Bohjalian charts his own course in his narrative decisions, and I appreciate his rogue approach.  He’s got balls.

However.  And this is a big however.  I’ve been really disappointed with Bohjalian’s last few offerings.  I think he overwrites.  I really don’t care about the etched design on the interior of a bracelet that some background character is wearing.  It’s not crucial to the action, and it does nothing to add to characterization or atmosphere.  I don’t want to read six pages of Emily weighing her options internally when intruders are in her house and her daughters are in danger.  Get upstairs and defend your kids, slowpoke!  (Incidentally, Emily is just annoying.  Let’s hang out with a bunch of old ladies who are obsessed with changing our names via a ceremony, so that we can be in their crazy garden club.  That’s normal.  And yeah, sure, girls, go on over to Geriatric Anise’s house after school every day.  Perfect, sounds great.  Whaaa?).  But I digress.  Anyway, these constant plodding details serve only to slow the plot.  The Night Strangers had so much potential, but was ultimately disappointing.  So many good ingredients – a haunted house!  Witches, twins, and PTSD!  A family, trying to reconnect after tragedy!  But the unnecessary descriptions made. Me. Crazy.  Bohjalian needs to get down to business and tell the story already.

I noticed a lot of passive voice as well.  Frequently, a scene would start midway through, and then one character would recount the previous action (italics mine): “They had been picked up after school by Anise and brought home so they could start setting up their very own greenhouse.  Once more, instead of doing homework or attending a dance class or having a music lesson, the girls were going to be gardening.”  Here’s an example of how a mechanical or grammatical choice truly impedes tone.  Passive voice tends to offset tension (something crucial to a ghost story), thereby weakening the writing.  Again, Bohjalian’s style disrupts the overall story.

Additionally, Bohjalian’s villains came across as hokey.  Silly, like caricatures.  They all had plant names, for goodness sake.  I mean, really – a coven of immortal witches that centers their craft around greenhouses in order to develop an anti-ageing tincture?  A tincture that requires the blood from a child?  And everyone in the coven goes along with this?  (Incidentally, the word “tincture” was overused to the point of absurdity.  It was jarring, I tell you.  Somebody needs to tell Bohjalian about MS Word’s handy “Find and Replace” feature.)  The idea of an entire congregation of murderers running rampant through the White Mountains was just too unbelievable, which prevented any kind of connection with the characters.  So, even though the plant-ladies were obviously sociopathic, and even though Chip was losing his mind and murderous, I just didn’t care.  Bohjalian never really made me nervous, which means the book failed, as Gothic tales go.  A scary book has to be scary.

So there you have it.  The Night Strangers disappoints.  Sad face.

***You know, I don’t like this post much.  I’m having a lot of trouble with it, but I’m putting it out there anyway.  I think my issue is this:  I didn’t like the book, but I didn’t exactly hate it, either…so I guess I find it challenging to have a unique voice about a topic I’m not passionately for or against.  Bloggers/writers out there – what do you do?  Do you love everything you put out there?  Or do you sometimes just quit the agonizing, say “enough, already” and hit POST?  What’s your advice?***