Author: Ania Ahlborn
Publisher: 47 North
Page Count: 267 Pages
Publication Date/Year: 2014
Genre: Horror
Over the past few years, I’ve come to be a fan of Ania Ahlborn’s horror novels. Some are flat out horror stories featuring ghosts and demonic children, others feature serial killer families. The latest novel I’ve read by Ania Ahlborn, The Bird Eater, is a novel about a haunting; a haunted place and a haunted person. It also features something that could be classified as an evil presence.
Aaron has had what some may call a challenging life; he didn’t know his mother and the aunt who raised him (and who he thought of as a mother) died when he was young. The opening chapter is from the point of view of Aaron’s aunt/mother figure. She provides minimal details about his mother except that she was unstable and killed herself (which she doesn’t tell Aaron) shortly after Aaron was born. Despite that, Ahlborn paints a fairly nice picture of Aaron’s life growing up in this unique family. That is until his Aunt is killed at the end of that first chapter. Fast forward twenty years, Aaron is fighting addiction and separated from his wife after their son Ryder died in an automobile accident. In other, Aaron is a haunted individual. His therapist suggests he return to the home in Arkansas where his aunt raised him and renovate the house, Holbrook House, which has laid abandoned since he left when he was a teenage twenty years ago.
Aaron re-connects with some of his old high school friends, including his old high school sweetheart Cheri. His departure was rather sudden when he was a teenager, a couple of the friends (Cheri included) thought he was dead. In those twenty years, Holbrook House has become a local legend, thought to be haunted. His old friends have a tough time understanding why Aaron would want to stay there given the house’s history and his history with it.
Aaron isn’t prone to believing in the supernatural. So when a young boy seems to be stalking him, Aaron thinks it is just an annoying teenager. When dead birds continue to pile up on the ramshackle house, Aaron has a tough time explaining that to his friends. The creepy kid gets closer, taunts Aaron, and even vandalizes Aaron’s vehicle.
Aaron’s sanity begins to slip as he sees the boy more often, he descends into despair over his ruined marriage and dead sone. He questions what is real, self-medicates, and consumes more alcohol. His friends worry about him, but he has a tough time breaking from his cycle of self-destruction. After relatively slow build, and that great foundational first chapter, The Bird Eater draws to a heightened and potent conclusion.
So, let’s get this out of the way, shall we? Anytime a story features a house with a Proper Name, chances are that house is haunted. Those chances go up to 100% when the Named House is central to the Horror story. Holbrook House is no exception, rather, it proves the rule. Looking at Aaron, he is very much an unreliable narrator, especially as he relays his harrowing experiences with the creepy kid and Holbrook House to his friends. His personal demons and haunted presence mirror the haunted nature of Holbrook House Ahlborn walked the line of reality and supernatural quite finely, especially as she pulled Aaron to the conclusion of the novel.
There are quite a few implied connections between characters and elements throughout the story. Clues blatant and subtle that, as a reader, I found enjoyable in the reading experience. In that respect, The Bird Eater was very successful as a conversation between reader and writer. Aaron seems to be the latest (or current) person affected by Holbrook House, there is a deeper history to the house and area that Aaron discovers and hints that Holbrook House isn’t quite done torturing people.
Very creepy with a magnetic narrative that kept me reading, The Bird Eater is another excellent horror tale from the mind of Ania Ahlborn.
Highly Recommended
No comments:
Post a Comment