β Scribed by Norman Partridge
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Starred Review. At the start of this mesmerizing new fantasy from Partridge (Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales), it's Halloween night in 1963 in Anytown, U.S.A., and the local teenage boys are ramping up for the annual hunt for the October Boy, a pumpkin-headed being cultivated by the town fathers to run the gauntlet each All Hallows' Eve. The boy who brings him down before he makes it to the local church wins a highly coveted ticket out of town and, as most believe, liberation from the stultifying ennui of small-town life that has crushed all ambition and dreams out of the adults. Pete McCormack is among the most determined boys on the hunt, but this evening he will learn horrifying truths about his town's tradition and the terrible price he must pay for his manhood. Partridge has always had a knack for sifting deeper significance from period pop culture, but here he brilliantly distills a convincing male identity myth from teen rebel drive-in flicks, garish comic book horrors, hard-boiled crime pulps and other bits of lowbrow Americana. Whether read as potent dark fantasy or a modern coming-of-age parable, this is contemporary American writing at its finest. (Oct. 31)
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βProbably the most exciting and original voice in horror literature to have appeared in the last decade.β--Peter Straub
βA major new talent.β--Stephen King
βThis is contemporary American writing at its finest.β--Publishers Weekly (starred review) on Dark Harvest
βIf youβre looking for a scary Halloween tale, with lots of blood and gore--and candy--youβve come to the right place.β--Rocky Mountain News on _Dark Harvest
βUsing a quick, lean prose reminiscent of the finest Gold Medal-era fiction and, at the same time, as fresh as a Quentin Tarantino film, Partridge packs more into this slim volume than most authors do in a bloated 600-page epic.β-- The Austin Chronicle_ on Dark Harvest
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