A Choir of Ill Children

Rating:
Summary: WOW ! WHAT A BOOK
Review: This is really one of the best book's I've read. This is not so much horror as it is southern gothic and it is great. Tom Piccirilli weaves a twised tale of swamps, in-breading, granny-witches, and the town of Kingdom Come. Our hero? is Thomas and he with his three brothers (joined at the head) take us on a great ride through deaths, storms, love, and mutilation. This is a MUST READ. The limited edition also has a chap book that adds a chapter to the story, worth it if you can find it (limited to 100 signed copies). Tom Piccirilli is a great story teller and I hope he gives us more about Potts county and Kingdom Come.

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Summary: Southern Gothic by way of New York!
Review: This one is a real cornerstone to the surreal southern gothic genre that includes horror/fantasy authors like Manly Wade Wellman, Michael Bishop, Elizabeth Massie, etc. But there's quite a difference as Piccirilli adds a New York edge to his tale of a backwater swamp town full of superstition, ghosts, and just plain weird characters. His writing is fluid and accessible, and the story is extremely fun and bizarre in the extreme. Equal parts mystery, dark fantasy, tragi-comedy and southern funk, you'll love to listen to this strange choir sing its song.

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Summary: Reading, in spasms
Review: Thomas is the descendant of the founders of Kingdom Come, a backwoods and backwater swamp town. He owns and runs the town mill, the major source of the income, thus making him the town's wealthiest inhabitant. But Thomas has other responsibilities as well. Many other responsibilities. One of the simpler of which includes looking out for his brothers, conjoined triplets who share a frontal lobe and speak in the vein of a choir of ill children.

In addition, within these pages one can find a coven of highly superstitious granny witches, a young girl who may not be all that she appears to be, a preacher's son named Drub who speaks in tongues while running naked throughout the town, a private eye with more on his mind than the cases he's been hired for, and a whole plethora of other vibrant though inherently flawed characters that definitely keep the story interesting. Furthermore, the carnival is coming, and with it comes a sense of impending doom.

Throughout the course of this book, Thomas learns that both the town and his family have several dark secrets that are interwoven into a colorful yet mysterious medley. This creepy medley culminates into a well thought-out finale wrought with both mysticism and intrigue as Thomas slowly peels away the layers of his very being to discover his roots.

Tom Piccirilli has created an amazing tale, divulged via excellent prose in true Southern Gothic fashion, that will keep one's curiosity bubbling and brewing while pondering what will come next. This is more than just a mere horror novel. This is outstanding literature. A Choir of Ill Children is the type of book one will want to read again and again, as there is more to be extracted from it's pages with each reading. Pick this one up, you won't regret it!

Rating:
Summary: I suppose Piccirilli is an acquired taste
Review: Tom Piccirilli is now one of horror's most acclaimed and widely read authors. "The Night Class" won a Bram Stoker award for best novel of 2002 and this one seems like a sure bet to win or at the very least be nominated at the 2005 stokers judging by the massive heaps of praise lavished on the novel. The average customer review at Amazon is a perfect 5. Just about every big-shot horror critic/novelist heaps glorious and luminous praise on this novel. Well, consider me an anomaly. I am an avid reader of horror novels but this one just didn't cut it for me.

The small southern town of Kingdom Come is a decaying swamp backwater that seems to attract the lowest form of life around. Violent bikers, nymphs, prostitutes and drug addicts constitute the bulk of its charming populace. The novel's central character and narrator, Thomas, is one of the richest men in town due to the inheritance he earned when his parents passed on. He lives in a large mansion with his freakish 3 brothers, conjoined triplets who have three bodies but share a single brain. One day with the arrival in town of a strange young mute girl who is seemingly abandoned, Thomas hires a private investigator to uncover the mysteries behind her arrival. Along with the uncovering of that mystery, Thomas will discover that there's way more dirt behind Kingdom Come's murky swamp.

Wheww! Trying to write a plot summary for this novel was not an easy task. See, Piccirilli is literally all over the map with this novel. There's little to no narrative coherence or plot structure. Instead of focusing on creating a story, Piccirilli seems content in just slapping together hallucinatory scenes about the everyday lives of the town's populace. Even at a mere 225 pages, reading this felt like a chore. Piccirilli's writing style is one that I found very difficult to absorb, not to mention trying to keep up with all the characters. There's so many that I would often find myself forgetting where I'd first read of this character and Piccirilli never makes any attempt to refresh the reader's memory once a minor character who hasn't appeared for dozens pages suddenly makes an appearance.

It's too bad because Piccirilli really is a fantastic writer in the technical sense. His prose can be beautiful and poetic, invoking such legends of the Southern gothic as Flannery O'connor and Faulkner. I was also impressed with the uniqueness of the town and of some of the characters he was creating. And yes, his ability to make us feel like a part of the Southern swamp setting is impressive. But for a novel (especially horror) to be entertaining it needs more than artistic or creative writing but also a coherent plot structure and in this Piccirilli fails miserably. I am baffled by all the praise thrown this novel's way and will be even more so if Piccirilli wins another Stoker this year. I used to think that Peter Straub was horror's most overrated author. Hail Tom Piccirilli, the new successor to that throne.


Rating:
Summary: Drop everything and read this NOW.
Review: Tom Piccirilli, A Choir of Ill Children (Night Shade, 2003)

Whoa. When I read The Night School a few months back, I knew Tom Piccirilli was a good writer, but it certainly didn't prepare me for this. A Choir of Ill Children was recently the featured horror novel at chapteraday.com. With books that pop up there, I usually read all five days' worth of material before deciding whether I'm going to check the book out of the library, buy it, or whatever. With A Choir of Ill Children, I stopped reading halfway through day one in order to put it on hold at the library; I'd finished it by the time I got the mailing for day five.

A Choir of Ill Children is the best American horror novel since Kathe Koja's Skin a decade previous, and the two novels serve to illustrate in how many different directions American horror has exploded. Koja writes surreal, existential horror novels (even for young adults; her most recent novel, The Blue Mirror, is eerily reminiscent of her tour de force, Strange Angels); Piccirilli, at least in this case, is firmly rooted in the Southern Gothic tradition. While closer to Koja's horror-of-absence than King or Koontz' things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, this difference between the two is like night and day. Well, more like dusk and dawn, but you get the idea.

Thomas is the wealthiest man in Kingdom Come, and the most shunned. His three brothers are conjoined at the frontal lobe, making the older residents scared of him, and the younger residents (who've never seen the boys, who stay in the house at all times) afraid of him the same way normal kids are afraid of a haunted house. Thomas' best friend Drabs, who's kind of a combination between a Pentecostal and an epileptic, tells Thomas the circus is coming to town, filmmakers have shown up to do a documentary on the triplets (one of whom falls in love with the narrator), and all the dogs in town are getting kicked by a vicious, but unseen, criminal. And that's what things look like before they get weird. Believe me, they get weird.

A Choir of Ill Children isn't so much a horror novel, despite what I said above, as it is a tragedy; it's about as close to classical tragedy as American literature can get. That is to say, when the revelations finally come at the end, they're somewhat predictable, but they're supposed to be. This is more Hamlet or Oedipus than it the The Thirty-Nine Steps. Piccirilli has created a true work of genius here, and one that will stay with you long after you've finished this book. A must-read. *****

Rating:
Summary: Dragonflies and kudzu
Review: Wow, what to say about this book? Thomas lives with his 3 brothers, who are conjoined triplets joined at the head and sharing a brain. His best friend is an often naked, prophetic preacher. There are two filmmaking students who are staying with Thomas while making a documentary, and one of them falls in love with one of the triplets while there. Oh, yeah, and there is also the "swamp girl" who lives with them. There are also one-legged child-murderers, their dead victims, swamp witches who cut off bits of themselves to stave off the coming storm, and bizarre canvivals. All of these elements come together wonderfully o tell a very strange tale.

A Choir of Ill Children is simultaneously lovely and disturbing, lyrical and horrific. Piccarilli's prose has a poetry about it, even while it is describing something horrible. Parts of the story reminded me of kudzu (hey, the story is southern gothic, so that leads me to kudzu): green and vibrant, and hiding god only knows what underneath. I loved this book. It was one of my favorite reads of the past year. I highly recommend it.