My Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Author: Chris Bohjalian
Narrator: Alison Fraser, Mark Bramhall
Length: 14 hrs and 7 mins
Publisher: Random House Audio
Publisher’s Summary:
From the bestselling author of The Double Bind, Skeletons at the Feast, and Secrets of Eden, comes a riveting and dramatic ghost story.
In a dusty corner of a basement in a rambling Victorian house in northern New Hampshire, a door has long been sealed shut with 39 six-inch-long carriage bolts.
The home’s new owners are Chip and Emily Linton and their twin ten-year-old daughters. Together they hope to rebuild their lives there after Chip, an airline pilot, has to ditch his 70-seat regional jet in Lake Champlain after double engine failure. Unlike the Miracle on the Hudson, however, most of the passengers aboard Flight 1611 die on impact or drown. The body count? Thirty-nine – a coincidence not lost on Chip when he discovers the number of bolts in that basement door. Meanwhile, Emily finds herself wondering about the women in this sparsely populated White Mountain village – self-proclaimed herbalists – and their interest in her fifth-grade daughters. Are the women mad? Or is it her husband, in the wake of the tragedy, whose grip on sanity has become desperately tenuous?
The result is a poignant and powerful ghost story with all the hallmarks readers have come to expect from bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian: a palpable sense of place, an unerring sense of the demons that drive us, and characters we care about deeply.
The difference this time? Some of those characters are dead.
From the Hardcover edition.
©2011 Chris Bohjalian (P)2011 Random House Audio
My Review: The first part of The Night Strangers really didn’t impress me very much. The writing was great and the whole plane crash was cool but other than that there just didn’t seem to be much originality. I couldn’t shake the feeling that The Night Strangers borrowed too heavily from the themes of several classic horror novels including The Shining and Amityville Horror. So I spent much of the first hour or so wondering how this horror novel mash up would come together and whether or not I would stick around long enough to find out.
Luckily Chris Bohjalian quickly integrates these themes into a tight little novel that really grabbed hold of me and held my attention all the way to a very satisfying ending. Chris manages to keep the reader/listener just out on the fringe of understanding until the very end. Even then there are some things that are left unsaid. This is an ending guaranteed to cause a lot of discussions/arguments at your book club.
Audio Production: Mark Bramhall was incredible as usual. Every Bramhall book that I have listened to has been taken to the next level by his narration. When I started listening to The Night Strangers I really didn’t understand why Mark just didn’t narrate the entire book. However, Alison Fraser really started to grow on me. She really seemed to shine during the sections featuring the twin girls.
Overall: Excellent narration on a book that will suck you into it’s realm of greenhouses, herbalists and an old Victorian home … even if you get the feeling that you have been there before.
Get your copy of The Night Strangers now!
