Book Review: NOS4A2 by Joe Hill
“What a blessed if painful thing, this business of being alive.”
📚
Vic McQueen has a special knack for finding lost things. All she has to do is jump onto her Raleigh Tuff Burner bike and pedal across the Shorter Way, a derelict covered bridge that delivers her wherever she needs to go, be it within her home state of Massachusetts or somewhere else throughout the old US of A.
Charlie Manx also has a gift, a special way with children, whom he takes for rides in his authentic, 1938 Rolls-Royce Wraith, christened with a “NOS4A2” vanity plate. While driving, he slips out of the regular world and onto secret roads leading to his own holiday-themed playground, “Christmasland.”
Young Vic crosses paths with Manx on the fateful day she pedals off seeking trouble. She’s the only kid to ever escape his vile clutches, and, though she attempts to forget him as she grows up, he never forgets her. And soon, he’s cruising the roadways once again, and he’s picked up another passenger: Vic’s son. Can Vic rescue him and put a stop to Manx’s malevolence, or is it too late for both of them?
NOS4A2 is unlike anything I’ve read before, and I could not have loved it more. Not since Michael McDowell’s Blackwater have I savored a novel of this length and experienced the inimitable sense of sinking into its glorious pages and becoming utterly immersed in its worlds. I laughed, nearly cried, and couldn’t read fast enough (though I never wanted it to end). At just shy of 700 pages, it never felt long or dragged. The depth of character development and creativity were nothing short of staggering, and everything from names to dialogue to word choice was spectacular, not to mention the writing. The black-and-white illustrations sprinkled throughout were a delight, while the distinctive chapter format (where each ran into the next and incorporated the title as part of an ongoing sentence) was a fun change of pace.
This book checked every box: it was darkly hilarious (a clinic in how humor and horror meld perfectly when done right), heartbreaking, horrific, perverse, terrifying, vulnerable, cozy, touching, devastating, creative, imaginative, unique, and nostalgic (oh, the delightful references!). It’s worth noting that I immediately went out and bought a package of pink Hostess Sno Balls (a forgotten childhood treat), and I’ve also been craving sweet potato fries caked with cinnamon and sugar…
As time marches on, the holiday season has begun to weigh on me, its consumer-driven nature hollow and exhausting, the expectation of feeling and acting a certain way and doing particular things heavy and arduous. I felt none of that while reading NOS4A2; in fact, I felt the opposite: a delicious and comforting sensation of joy, wonder, and coziness (along with chilling horror and sinister dread and terror) that made me want to bake gingerbread cookies and curl up with a mug of hot cocoa and a good book (preferably this one!) by a roaring fire.
Every facet felt timeless and outstanding, brilliant and awe-inspiring. The supernatural/fantasy aspects were divine, as were the gothic elements, the characters deeply flawed and human (Lou Carmody is one of the greatest I’ve encountered, and I wanted to hug him the entire time, along with capable and intrepid librarian, Maggie Leigh). Charlie Manx was a phenomenal villain; he’s layered and complex, surprising and fascinating, and his interactions with his sidekick/henchman, Bing Partridge, produced some of the funniest moments.
This is, without a doubt, a new all-time favorite and a future reread. I had considered leaving my initial read for the holidays, but experiencing this at the onset of summer was ideal in every way. Make no mistake, this is a brutal saga (and readers should check triggers), but one that’s so fantastic, it’s difficult to do it justice. It’s a profound tale of love, imagination, evil, and heart that explores costs and connections, bridges and possibilities, distances and limits, monsters and men, and, of course, things lost and found. It’s perfection in print — my first Joe Hill experience, and most certainly not my last!
Normally, I include a single quote at the beginning of my review, but I found so many favorites, I had to share them all.
Favorite Quotes:
“What’s good stays gold no matter how much of a beating it takes.”
“The road to Christmasland is paved in dreams!”
“Christmas was almost three months in the rearview mirror, and there was something awful about Christmas music when it was nearly summer. It was like a clown in the rain, with his makeup running.”
“Sooner or later a black car came for everyone. It came and took you away from your loved ones, and you never got to go back.”
“Everyone you lost was still there with you, and so maybe no one was ever lost at all.”
“There was no such thing as arguing with delight. Like seeing a pretty girl with the sunlight in her hair, like pancakes and hot chocolate in front of a crackling fire. Delight was one of the fundamental forces of being, like gravity.”
“It seemed to her sometimes that this was the only fight that mattered: the struggle to take the world’s chaos and make it mean something, to put it to words.”
“Fantasy was always only a reality waiting to be switched on.”
“Emotions are as real as gravity. Dreams are as powerful as history.”
🖤Amanda
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