October - Joyce Carol Oates - Modern Horror

I am a bit confused about this month's topic, or maybe I have forgotten the original discussion. What is modern horror? Just any horror published in the late 20th century and 21st century? Oates' first novel was published in 1964.

I did read Perfume but not sure if it counts. It was published in the 1980s but set in the 1700s. In some ways it feels very gothic and old-fashioned; it others it seems very postmodern.

I don't know what "Modern Horror" means either. If it's anything that has been published in the past few decades, then I just finished one that fits. It's Dark Inside by Jeyn Roberts, a YA book I picked off my kids' bookshelves about four teenagers trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world filled with zombie-like killers.

I was going on the assumption that is is something published in the last few decades, yes.

The Manhattan Hunt Club / John Saul
4 stars

Jeff has been falsely convicted of a crime. But when he is “transferred” out of the prison, he is taken… somewhere and locked in a room with another man. It’s not long after that they are released into the tunnels underneath New York and are told that they’ll “win” if they make it to the surface. Meanwhile, his family and girlfriend think he died in a crash.

I really liked this. It didn’t take long to get sucked in, though it takes a little bit to figure out what’s going on in the book. It’s told from different viewpoints, so the reader is partial to things that the characters aren’t as they try to figure out what’s happening, as well. This was one I didn’t really want to put down – I wanted to keep reading. And, there were a couple of twists!

I finished I'll Be Watching You by Charles de Lint, about a stalker and serial killer. The point-of-view moves between him and his targets, and I found the book extremely creepy and disturbing. It's set in Newford, the scene of many of de Lint's fantasy novels, and de Lint wrote this under the pseudonym Samuel Keys. As a horror novel, this one is pretty good, though I must admit I prefer his fantasy novels.

>5 mathgirl40: I really liked that one!