The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Girl Next Door
Book Review: It wasn't her aunt
Summary: 5 Stars
Sylvia Likens was not killed by her aunt and cousins as many reviewers have stated. Gertrude was just a neighborhood lady who took in Sylvia and her sister because their parents offered to pay her $20 a week while they traveled with a carnival. She was poor, had too many kids and barely supported them. Sylvia's father never bothered to check out Gertrude's home to make sure it was suitable for his children. In his own words he "didn't want to pry" into Gertrude's private life. Unbelievable. Just wanted to clear that up. Might be kind of insulting to the Likens' family to say their own blood was responsible for the death (although some would say the parents were partially to blame for not checking up on their daughters).Book Review: Just plain Gross
Summary: 1 Stars
This book has absolutely no redeeming value what so ever, I know these things occur in the sick minds of monster humans but I would prefer not to read about them in detail. It is definitely not a horror novel at least in my definition of what horror is supposed to be.
The book is just plain gross, it does not take any kind of talent to conjure up sick images, just a sick mind. I stopped reading a lot of King when he used a child in Pet Sematary getting hit by a semi trailer.Cheap tricks if you ask me. Good horror is akin to Anne Rice's Interview With A Vampire. Read it if you must. Skip the first 135 pages nothing happens.
Book Review: Monsters dont have to be fictional
Summary: 5 Stars
I can not begin to express the feelings I got from reading this book. Like other reviewers, I can sit through books like American Psycho and not be as disturbed, but I was in shock while reading this book. Not only is the story true, but it is written out so well by Jack Ketchum. You can picture everything he is describing..unfortunately. Definately worth reading just for that fact that it is a true story and shows that even though we can describe monsters as scary non-human creatures, what people should be scared of are the real monsters, other humans.Book Review: Must-Read, If You Can Take It
Summary: 5 Stars
It's probably a good thing that this book was not the first I've read from Jack Ketchum. If it had been, I think I would have been very hard-pressed to ever read anything else by him.
It's not that it's a cliched story, or poorly written -- quite the opposite, on both counts. Jack Ketchum is a fantastic writer who paints pictures with words, in a stark, simple, appallingly graphic in-your-face savagery that compells you to follow along, even though you really don't want to. His writing, in all three of his novels I've read so far, is like the train that can't stop wrecking, & the reader is nearly forced to keep watching. There are a great many hacks churning out "horror" fiction -- hacks who promise to make you jump, who are proclaimed "shocking" & so on, but who seem incapable of actually Going There. Ketchum not only isn't afraid to Go There, he's not afraid to shove your nose in it.
Prior to reading this book, I had read The Lost -- which I found disturbing, but not difficult -- & Off Season, which nearly made me sick. I had thought, however, that in Off Season, Ketchum had gotten it out of his system. He depicted things in that book which no decent human being should even imagine, much less put to paper. But then I read The Girl Next Door. I have to admit ... having just read the single most repulsively grim depiction I'd ever experienced of the BackWoods Cannibals Slaughtering Innocent Vacationers, I really didn't see how a story about child abuse could be more shocking. But then, I read The Girl Next Door.
It's instructive to note Ketchum's own words on the two books -- that Off Season was about a family of cannibals, so it can't be taken seriously. The Girl Next Door, on the other hand, is about child abuse -- something that, tragically, happens every day, even in the United States, & not merely among the families of the poor. It's also instructive to note that Ketchum described having written some scenes for this book which, upon reading them, he thought were so disgusting he removed them from the story. Keep that in mind while you read this book ... & you won't be able to stop wondering, "If what they did to this poor child was THIS bad, what the heck did he self-censor?????"
It's not a question for which I desire an answer.
If you've never before read Jack Ketchum, I urge you to read something else by him first. In particular, I'd suggest you read The Lost, because it's actually a semi-conventional story, even if it is oddly disturbing in ways I can't really define. But it's still semi-conventional. It doesn't contain imagery of such horrific brutality as to make you wonder how the author could even think of such a thing; it doesn't make your stomach clench while you choke back that vile taste. The Girl Next Door, however, will do those things. On the other hand, if reading it makes you hug your children closer to you & love them more than you ever thought you could ... if reading it makes you want to volunteer for child welfare organizations to help the victims of child abuse ... if it outrages you that such human-shaped monsters could even exist in American society ... than I'm glad he was this unrelentingly brutal.
Book Review: No ghosts, no demons. Just true human Evil
Summary: 5 Stars
Jack Ketchum is known as one of the most extreme writers in horror. This may lead you to assume he's someone doing 'gore for the sake of gore' or just making unbelievably evil one dimensional situations purely to torment people. You'd be very wrong.
Ketchum is a literate, dare I say poetic writer. His horror often comes not from surreal situations but rather the hyper-real. Everyday life shattered with depravity and violence that comes believeably; and that makes it all the morre horrible.
THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is certainly a horror novel. It fills you with dread, repulsion, and fear. It also depresses you, because it is about the fragile grasp of morality that the pre-adolescent have, especially when they are being coerced by the mentally unstable. (if you think this story is not realistic look at cults, or even better, child soldiers and their warped reality in Africa).
Ketchum goes into aspects of life most writers fear to go. It is just too far out from the comfort zones, it leaves you feeling as if the world doesn't make any sense. The book is haunting and depressing. It is not enjoyable but it is a story that will get a reaction from anyone with a pulse. Think Lord of the Flies if Dahmer washed up on shore and began to lead the kids.
There are horror stories that aim to thrill and excite the desensitized, and then there are those that re-sensitize the calloused horror-file. GIRL NEXT DOOR is the latter. If too many Texas Chansaw Massacres have left you numb, pick this up and prepare for a wake-up slap to the face. And if you have no stomach for true evil human nature, then I fear for your sanity reading this book.