Animosity, by James Newman - a review
ANIMOSITY by James Newman
Animosity. Defined by
the Webster’s dictionary as: “Ill will
or resentment tending toward active hostility; an antagonistic attitude.”
James Newman’s definition is much more terrifying, through
the heart and unforgiving. We’ve all
been there at some time or another during our lives. The way people stare. The way they point and whisper behind our
backs. Maybe some of them were once friends,
good friends that we had come to know well and have even cared about once upon
a time, but now they are in opposition of us and we don’t know why. Could have been a rumor blown out of
proportion. Maybe the result of
unrelenting peer pressure from someone who dislikes you for whatever reason and
feels the need to convince others to feel the same way. Or it could have been as simple as saying the
wrong thing at the wrong time and thus having the very people around you
spreading their misconceptions like a vicious plague.
For Andy Holland, the key character in ANIMOSITY, it was a
matter of being at the wrong place at the worst possible time. This is where Andy’s life begins to spiral
painfully south. Not that life was ever
easy for Andy. You try discovering your wife
getting plugged in the rear by another man and see how easy things get. It’s not easy for Andy who must settle for
seeing his daughter on specified days of the week and then having to say
good-bye when she goes home to her mother and the new man of her home. No, things have never been easy for Andy but
at least they were within reason, something he could understand for the most
part. And then he found a young dead
girl too close to home and everything changed.
“Ten minutes ago I
killed three of my neighbors.” James
Newman wastes no time with pleasantries as we’re immediately sucked into the
chaotic world of small town America
from the very first line of this book. It’s
with this intensity that Newman’s expert hand leads us through the gut
wrenching tribulations of Andy Holland who only wants to enjoy his normal life
as a divorced father who writes best selling horror novels for a living.
So what then when Andy makes his gruesome discovery? What then when all fingers point at him from
behind closed doors and, eventually, right in his face? Where will he go when he has no place to run,
no place to hide, and no one he can trust?
It was bad enough that Andy was always looked upon as the odd but
friendly enough fella who writes scary stories.
But when his small time celebrity status is turned against him and
people begin to dig in places they shouldn’t, that’s when faces begin to twist
and people become revealed for what they truly are. What would you do?
Each page of Andy’s hell drips with so much emotion and dark
realism, that the impact of Newman’s imagination won’t easily be shaken off
even, if not especially, after the last page has been turned. Not that you’ll want to shake off the
scattered remnants that this nasty little story will imbed in your
conscience. If anything this will be a
book you’ll want to read again just to understand it under a new light.
For this reveiwer personally, there are books I have read
that I enjoyed and quickly forgot, perhaps some more gradually than
others. But then there are the ones,
ones like ANIMOSITY, that I can’t wait to let unfold in my mind as
introspection kicks in. Books like this
are almost as much fun to complete and contemplate over as they are to actually
be in the middle of reading. Well,
almost, but far from quite. After all,
with a book like ANIMOSITY the power is in the pains of discovery. And these are the books that last.
NECASSARY EVIL PRESS
BAD MOON BOOKS
CAMELOT BOOKS
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