Angel’s Adjectives: Hoary and honest
KNOCK KNOCK comes off the pages with all the menace of an old cautionary tale that has yet to be watered down for a modern, more tender culture. There’s nothing tender about Miskowski’s treatment of her characters. With bald honesty, she paints a picture of rural America that leaves you shivering. I hesitate to call any of her characters heroes. They are, rather, antiheroes, examples to future generations–who probably won’t do anything differently either–of curious, careless children who go too deep into the woods to ever find their way out again.
There’s a classic atmosphere to this horror novel. It reads more like Stephen King than Charlaine Harris and has none of the trappings or traps of recent horror. No vampires, no werewolves. No sweet romance. The relationships detailed in Knock Knock are hard, cold, and as disconcerting as a nosebleed–each irrevocably warped by its brush with the darkness in the woods.
The plot itself sneaks up on you while you’re distracted by the lives of the three core characters. Before you know it, the evil has reared its head, and the story has twisted again.
I found myself overcome with nostalgia while reading KNOCK KNOCK. Its style took me back to a time when I was first discovering horror and devouring it as wholly as I could. For me, it was the equivalent an old music box tune that brings back memories of fear–fear inspired long ago by a haunting presence I thought was gone for good. And yet, there it was again.
I savored it all.
I loved this book.