Shella

Rating:
Summary: "Shella" -- Great book
Review: "Shella" is one of the best novels I've ever read. It's a no-nonsence book with a moral twist and characters I can relate to. Although Shella herself turns out to be a real bitch, John and Misty are victims of the world around them. I feel pity as well as admirement for the pair. I think "Shella" is the only book I've read over a dozen times. It's writing style is bs-free and wraps the storyline in a nice package altogether. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys stories that tell it like it is. I find it to be more a diary than a memoir. Often as I read this book I can't help but wonder how the characters would have turned out if their childhoods were troubleless and futures bright. I feel as if I know them myself. They remind me of real people I know. Overall, this is my favourite book out of all the ones I've ever read, and believe me, I've read plenty.

Rating:
Summary: Plain and simple...
Review: ...the finest love story written.

While many see the darkness of Vachss' work, this book shows the "love" that drives Ghost's search for the only thing he really needs...Shella.

Rating:
Summary: best book ever
Review: All I can say: I started drinking my drinks in two glasses and watched TV whithout sound after I went through this book. Every men loves Ghost eventhough he's a killer.

Rating:
Summary: The peak of terror for Vachss
Review: All of Andrew Vachss's early novels depict a New York City underbelly of infinite danger and infinite twisted evil... they make for terrifying reads. But for me, and other Vachss readers I've spoken with, SHELLA is the absolute peak of relentless horror. Probably only Vachss could create a situation where a child-like killer searches for the only woman who was ever kind to him, and at novel's end when he finds her, her first words to him are: "Please, KILL ME! " And during the search the main character, Ghost, encounters people and situations that would make Burke's usual enemies look like the regulars at the Tuesday Night sewing circle at a Methodist Church. If you read only one novel by Vachss this should be it.

Rating:
Summary: The peak of terror for Vachss
Review: All of Andrew Vachss's early novels depict a New York City underbelly of infinite danger and infinite twisted evil... they make for terrifying reads. But for me, and other Vachss readers I've spoken with, SHELLA is the absolute peak of relentless horror. Probably only Vachss could create a situation where a child-like killer searches for the only woman who was ever kind to him, and at novel's end when he finds her, her first words to him are: "Please, KILL ME! " And during the search the main character, Ghost, encounters people and situations that would make Burke's usual enemies look like the regulars at the Tuesday Night sewing circle at a Methodist Church. If you read only one novel by Vachss this should be it.

Rating:
Summary: Love?
Review: Ghost promises to kill Shella's father. He tells her this. It is so romantic you weep when you read it. Vachss writes crisp. So sharp it cuts your mind. He creates characters with such depth they are bottomless. They are bottomless because the depths of human depravity is bottomless. You like Ghost by the end of the book. Hell, you like him at the beginning. To label him an antihero belittles his character, just as labeling him a murderer belittles his actions. It would be accurate but not accurate. He does kill. A lot. But there is no emotion in it. He is like a weapon. Neither truly good nor truly evil. Simply there. Waiting to have its sights locked and its trigger pulled. But Ghost, John, whatever his name, doesn't need anyone to justify his actions. He doesn't care about those things. All he cares about is Shella. He will go to hells without number to find her if necessary. And it is necessary. I don't know if one could call what he feels for Shella love. I don't know what it is. Love doesn't exist where he and Shella are. It never did and never will. But the closest word that describes it is love. Does love exist in hell? You'd have to ask Ghost. Perhaps that is what Vachss wants to tell a story about. Maybe he wants to show us what true love is like in true hell.

Rating:
Summary: Love?
Review: Ghost promises to kill Shella's father. He tells her this. It is so romantic you weep when you read it. Vachss writes crisp. So sharp it cuts your mind. He creates characters with such depth they are bottomless. They are bottomless because the depths of human depravity is bottomless. You like Ghost by the end of the book. Hell, you like him at the beginning. To label him an antihero belittles his character, just as labeling him a murderer belittles his actions. It would be accurate but not accurate. He does kill. A lot. But there is no emotion in it. He is like a weapon. Neither truly good nor truly evil. Simply there. Waiting to have its sights locked and its trigger pulled. But Ghost, John, whatever his name, doesn't need anyone to justify his actions. He doesn't care about those things. All he cares about is Shella. He will go to hells without number to find her if necessary. And it is necessary. I don't know if one could call what he feels for Shella love. I don't know what it is. Love doesn't exist where he and Shella are. It never did and never will. But the closest word that describes it is love. Does love exist in hell? You'd have to ask Ghost. Perhaps that is what Vachss wants to tell a story about. Maybe he wants to show us what true love is like in true hell.

Rating:
Summary: Another noir tour d' force by Vachss with a message!!!
Review: Having read the entire Burke series by Andrew Vachss, I decided to read his one novel outside the series called Shella. And as with his other works I was more than pleased. In this fast paced, novel we meet the main characters "Ghost", an abused child who spent his life in foster homes, and institutions from which he emerges an emotionally disturbed killer. His only touch of human feelings coming from an equally disturbed abused child, the stripper turned S&M role player Shella. Written like all of Vachss' works in the first person narrative, we learn of the tale of Shella and Ghost through his eyes. It's a story that takes the reader through a world of violence, abuse, S&M, murder, and neo-Nazis camps. As Ghost tracks down Shella, after his release from prison only to find her terminally ill. Vachss's message again is that people like Ghost and Shella do exist, they are the lost souls of an America which neither cares for, nor wants to help the thousands of children left in state institutions, or with demented foster parents. Who then grow up to be the next generation, of dysfuctional dwellers of our cities, and rural towns. It is a tough no holds barred read, and if you like noir reading, and better still noir with a real message, then I recommend this novel highly.

Rating:
Summary: hard-bitten, shank-edged truth in a bottle
Review: In a sharp departure from his Burke series novels, Vachss tackles a different arena laced with the same themes, arsenic and lace wrapped into a prose style so minimalist as to almost not exist--the message? Child abuse, child sexual abuse in specific, produces monsters that, ultimately, will either outcome as saviors or, worst-case scenario, future predators lurking in corners and crevices, wreaking havoc on a world unsuspecting and ignorant in perspective and/or willingness to go the extra distance to fight the monster. Andrew Vachss once again displays a major talent for telling the truth as it is, in reality, not some whitewashed prosaic nonsense blathered about on the 6:00 p.m. news by psychobabble masters and tv talk show brain-deficit fools. This is the real article. Coming at the reader with laser-like poignancy and pen, Mr. Vachss tells the tale of a child grown up in the state system who, like the system spawning him, is devoid of emotion and so, as the equation works its wonders, sets upon the world with the same vicious tenacity and mayhem as the system wrought on him. His only center of emotion is faceted with a remembrance of a woman who made him into a slice of humanity, and this book is a rendering of the circuitous path "Ghost" (the protagonist) must take in order to find that woman, "Shella." Told with an all-embracing pinpointed phraseology, and admixture of poetic grace and sadness, this book is one of Vachss' best. The fact that Burke is not included in this book doesn't in any way minimize its impact; in fact, it actually maximizes the punch to the heartstrings. In a way, Vachss has managed through his amazing ability to characterize the human condition in its grittiest and naked to the bone truth, to allow the reader into a world that we only "imagine" exists and parlay it into the "factual" that it in truth really is. If the reader is interested in what creates monsters on Planet Earth, they would do well to check out Mr. Vachss' other novels featuring the now-famous protagonist, savior of lost souls, and avenger of predatory beasts, Burke, including Blue Belle, Strega, Safe House, and the numerous others in this amazing serial telling of what promulgates and perpetrates the true perpetrators of the worst evil, child abuse.

Rating:
Summary: Gripping and disturbing.
Review: My favorite of Vachss' novels. The character of Ghost is a fascinating, compelling caraciture of abuse and its sustained effects on children. A very disturbing, violent tale, but ultimately thought-provoking. Vachss is pretty heavy-handed as writers go, though I doubt the man even considers himself an author per se. Rather, I've always gotten the sense he thinks of himself as a "preacher" of sorts -- spreading his particular gospel. When you are trying to save souls, a lack of subtlety is excusable and warranted.

The point of this novel (and, in fact, most all of Vachss' work) can be summed up by recalling the words of the killer, Wesley, in another of the author's novels:

"You do things to us. We grow up and do things to you."