The Pallbearers Club

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But do we? It’s as if you have written this book specifically to deny us the truth, with Mercy deconstructing and undermining Art’s memoir from the margins. Another note: as the book goes on, the playfulness decreases and the terror increases. It's like a sound mixing board. The playful slide moves down and the terror one up and up. So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things—terrifying things—that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right? Mercy seeing one of Art’s fliers about the club decides to join. Mercy was a bit older and in Jr. College, constantly smoked weed, and was way cooler than Art but she seemed to like him and thought the club was interesting. But she had an odd habit of bringing her Polaroid Camera with her and took lots of pictures of the dead. She also knew a bit a freaky folklore that involved digging up the dead. Before we even get to the uncanny and possibly supernatural elements of The Pallbearers Club, the very nature of the club itself is such a strange idea. Where did that come from?

Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship. Critical PraiseSTAR review in the April 15 issue of Bookliots and on the blog: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2022/04... This was a hard book to get through, but I felt somehow compelled to keep going. I mean, this is a big-name author...SOMETHING must be in store for the reader SOON, right? BOND: And thinking about that, this book is very much located in the late '80s. It's a very Gen-X story, right?

if art is meant to be paul tremblay/not paul tremblay, it’s not a very kind self-portrait, either in his physical descriptions, his behavior, or his writing skills, which—as art—are frequently turgid and overwritten. concerning the surgery to correct his scoliosis: OMG this is the book you need to get your sweaty, graspy hands on this year if you consider yourself a horror fan of any standing (and yes, yes I do). A HUGE fan of Tremblay’s dark, bleak and beautiful novels, I was absolutely thrilled when the lovely folks at Titan approved my review request for ‘The Pallbearer’s Club’ which is out NOW Let’s start with the plot and the way this story is told. The narrative structure of this book is so fantastic. It is framed as a memoir written by Art Barbara. Going in, we know nothing about Art, or why he would have written a memoir about himself. We also almost immediately notice that there are seemingly handwritten annotations and footnotes written by a mystery voice, and those footnotes are critiquing the story as written. We soon realize that this story Art is telling is about his friendship with mysterious cool girl Mercy Brown, whom he met through the Pallbearers Club, a group he formed in high school as a community service opportunity. Teens work at funerals of forgotten people to serve as mourners and pallbearers. Mercy saw the ad Art put out, and called him. Thus began a friendship built on punk music, 80s yearning, and a mutual interest in working funerals. Art for extracurricular brownie points, Mercy for… other reasons. As Art talks about their friendship, he slowly reveals that he believes her to be a vampire. Mercy, in the footnotes, is constantly questioning his words, editorializing, and it is through both of their POVs that we see a slow burn creepy story about toxic friendship and potential vampirism come to be. I loved how Tremblay decided to tell this story, as it makes both of our narrators have truths and lies that the are sprinkling in. And given that Tremblay is a master at creating deeply disturbing horror moments, the vampire stuff (as Art describes it) is well done, unique, and taps into an actual folktale from New England that is about, in fact, a woman named Mercy Brown who was thought to be a vampire. Look it up! Start HERE. I loved how he brought in this actual story of American mythology and connected it to a metaphor about toxic friendships. The vampire mythos that we get feels fresh and new, and it taps into the non-romanticized themes of vampires as users, superstitions around illness, and codependence. It’s so damn good.The most beautiful and heartbreaking funeral I've been to in a long time, The Pallbearers Club is melancholy, funny, and very cruel, but you won't regret carrying this coffin." — Grady Hendrix, bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group

Paul Tremblay delivers another mind-bending horror novel. . . . The Pallbearers Club is a welcome casket of chills to shoulder.”— Washington Post in this book, the narrator mentions being at club babyhead in the 90s, a club yours truly also frequented in the 90s. therefore, it is within the realm of possibility that karen brissette (the one who is ME, and not the character from tremblay's novel A Head Full of Ghosts) fictionally crossed paths with the pseudonymous narrator (who may or may not be paul tremblay), at that club or any of the other providence institutions namedropped in this book, and all i gotta say about that is JEEZ, tremblay, stalk much?Books can have teeth. A whole mouthful of them. The Pallbearers Club has a whole lifetime of them." --Stephen Graham Jones, New York Times bestselling author of My Heart Is a Chainsaw