THOSE ACROSS THE RIVER (2011) by Christopher Buehlman

[GRWelsh]

I just got this out from the library and started it. The author was recommended to me by my cousin Karl, the same one who recommended THE FISHERMAN by John Langan. Karl actually recommended BETWEEN TWO FIRES (2012) by this author but my library didn't have it, so I got this instead. I'm trying to cut back on how many books I buy as I'm overloaded. I'm only a few chapters in, but it is good so far. Northerners relocate to Georgia during the Great Depression, and there is weird history in the small town they move to. The characterization is well done, and the protagonist is a bit unlikeable as a college professor who stole the young trophy wife from another college professor, but he's also sympathetic in that he has scars from the Great War, both physical and psychological.

[GRWelsh]

This novel is so literary that bringing in the supernatural after a certain point seems superfluous. By that I mean, there is so much ordinary human horror that is referenced that anything more seems unneeded. The writing is very good. This book is chock full of quotable passages, which remind me of literary classics. Here is just one example:

Peter was nearing forty, and he had the noncommittal look of a man who was still waiting for his actual life to begin. He had still not met the better people who would eventually matter to him.

That's a brilliant way to describe someone in just two sentences, and that is for a minor character. Here's another one:

The mother of a dead son must stand alone even among her sisters with the memory of that child's birth and the wasted milk of his nursing.

That's digging pretty deep into personal thoughts of misery.