The Pallbearers Club

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So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things—terrifying things—that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?

There's no horror here, just a character study that amounts to one whiny, self-absorbed dude ranting endlessly and one snarky, manic pixie dream girl commenting throughout. Also something about vampires? Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, The Pallbearers’ Club is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unforgettable and unsettling friendship. I don't really know what more to say. It was pointless, I didn't like either of the main characters, and I'm far too lazy to try and read into all the clever allusions and innuendos and metaphors etc. AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR DAT.I also just did not buy all the supernatural stuff. The Mercy commentary is fantastic, and what this book does quite well is leave you with a question of "did this really happen?" Is Art making all this up? Or is Mercy covering up secrets she doesn't want anyone to know? The ambiguity walks a fine line, but it walks it very well. It walks it so well that I wish the rest of the book had more there there! The supernatural stuff was never really scary, I found it confusing more often than not. their friendship changed his life, but the precise nature of that change is the crux of this he said/she said account; a game of pin-the-tail-on-the-unreliable-narrator that depends on whether you believe art, who insists on referring to his book as a memoir, or mercy, who is equally insistent on reclassifying it as a novel. if you want your copy to have spikes, you're gonna have to DIY—bookstores and libraries frown on that kinda thing. Have you ever had that friend who seems to reappear at times throughout your life, and you gravitate towards each other, yet the friendship has never been a good influence on you? For me, that was the crux of this whole novel and something I found simply captivating and extremely endearing. I hope that doesn't class as a spoiler. Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she’s making cuts.

The Pallbearers Club is Tremblay at his most audacious best. It's such a sneaky mindblower! It'll burrow deep inside you, and by the end, you'll be wondering if the room you're sitting in, the people you're talking with, or even your own memory, are real. This book is horror's answer to Nabakov's Pale Fire." – Sarah Langan, acclaimed author of Good Neighbours STAR review in the April 15 issue of Bookliots and on the blog: https://raforall.blogspot.com/2022/04...The most beautiful and heartbreaking funeral I've been to in a long time, The Pallbearers Club is melancholy, funny, and very cruel, but you won't regret carrying this coffin." — Grady Hendrix, bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group An extraordinary novel. This book is fun, warm, sad, and most of all, profoundly humane: it subverts horror tropes and real-life certainties in one go. I loved it and I need to shout it in the streets.”— Francesco Dimitri, author of The Book of Hidden Things and Never the Wind Written as a memoir, the story is narrated by 17-year-old Art Barbara, a gangly high school student with severe scoliosis. Hoping to beef up his college applications, Art starts an after-school club, the Pallbearers Club, whose three members attend wakes and funerals. When a mysterious young woman named Mercy Brown joins the group, a life-altering friendship begins. Co-publishers Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi announced a new imprint for ChiZine Publications (CZP) to focus on Young Adult fiction. Called “ChiTeen,” the first title will be The Unlikely But Totally True Adventures of Floating Boy and Anxiety Girl by Paul Tremblay and Stephen Graham Jones, scheduled for release in spring 2014. A cleverly voiced psychological thriller from the nationally bestselling author of The Cabin at the End of the World and Survivor Song.

It is such an outrageous and ingenious concept, I don’t believe anything like this has been done before and I love it for it’s boldness, the risks it takes and how it speaks so directly and fearlessly to the reader. In his brilliant new novel, Tremblay takes on the well-mined small-town, coming-of-age horror trope, transforming it into something so original, it elevates the entire genre." — Booklist (starred review) The Pallbearers Club constructs a maze of uncanny ambiguity and disquiet—a Nabokovian labyrinth that sustains its mystery past the point few writers but Paul Tremblay would risk.”— Ramsey CampbellYears later in an attempt to make sense of events that occurred, Art writes the Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. OMG this is the book you need to get your sweaty, graspy hands on this year if you consider yourself a horror fan of any standing (and yes, yes I do). A HUGE fan of Tremblay’s dark, bleak and beautiful novels, I was absolutely thrilled when the lovely folks at Titan approved my review request for ‘The Pallbearer’s Club’ which is out NOW Will something terrible happen? When will something terrible happen? Is the worst always to come? The worst is always to come.’