{"id":1476,"date":"2011-10-18T01:30:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T23:30:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethingwicked.co.za\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2011-10-15T23:19:45","modified_gmt":"2011-10-15T21:19:45","slug":"shadows-by-joan-de-la-haye","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/2011\/10\/18\/shadows-by-joan-de-la-haye\/","title":{"rendered":"Shadows by Joan De La Haye"},"content":{"rendered":"

review by Sarah Lotz
\n\"\"<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Published by Generation Next Publications
\nPB 258 pages
\nRRP R150 (Kindle \u00a32.14<\/a>) <\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

My father’s funeral had been that morning, and Kevin thought a night out would be the best way to take my mind off how he’d died. It hadn’t helped. All I could think about was that I hadn’t been able to say good-bye or tell him that I loved him. I couldn’t even get drunk and forget about it. I couldn’t pretend that I was okay and put on a happy face for the sake of Kevin and his friends. As a result we cut the night short, which irritated Kevin’s friends and I was once again the party pooper.<\/p>\n

Kevin had been gone for what seemed like a few seconds when everything that I knew and trusted in my life changed forever. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/td>\n

\"\"
\nFrom Issue 14 (Oct 2011)<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I SHOULD HAVE LEARNT by now not to judge a book by its author. I\u2019ve bumped into horror author Joan de la Haye on a couple of occasions (the South African SFFH writing scene is still fairly small), and she\u2019s funny, sweet, bubbly and excellent company. But somewhere under that lovely exterior there\u2019s a seriously fucked-up imagination, because her debut novel, Shadows<\/em>, is about as dark as it gets.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not easily spooked. The last time I had nightmares after reading a novel was when I finished the brilliant Kaaron Warren\u2019s Slights<\/em>, and Shadows<\/em> reminded me of this book in some ways. Both authors are unafraid to tackle contentious or shocking subject matter; they fearlessly write from the perspectives of so-called unlikeable characters and both skillfully create scenes of such powerful and disturbing imagery that after reading them I needed a good dose of brain-bleach (pretty much the highest compliment you can pay to a horror author).<\/p>\n

Shadows<\/em>\u2019 protagonist, Sarah, is coping with the fallout of her estranged father\u2019s suicide, while allowing her dick of a boyfriend, Kevin, to walk all over her. Kevin is obsessed with his sister Carol\u2019s lover \u2013 the manipulative Denise \u2013 and with only the minimum of soul searching, soon embarks on a stomach-churning, incestuous three-way affair with the two women. Sarah is also plagued by a demon\/hallucination she names Jack, who torments her with nightmarish, gore-filled apparitions (including a particularly nasty vision of the death of her cat). Most of the characters have a sinister hidden agenda, and there\u2019s not a redeeming characteristic between them \u2013 a challenge for an author to pull off without slipping into parody. In fact, the protagonists are all so repellent, that the demonic presence \u2013 a yellow-eyed, foul-mouthed fellow who\u2019s in desperate need of a manicure – comes across as the character with the most integrity.<\/p>\n

Almost every character in the novel is either a rapist, has colluded in sexual abuse, or is the victim of rape. While this is personally way too much for me to stomach, de la Haye doesn\u2019t fall into the trap of using sexual abuse as a cheap shock tactic. She implies that the evil that we do to each other, almost casually in some cases, is far far worse than anything the imagination can conjure up, and that human nature is far more disturbing and cruel than demonic entities, vampires or bogeymen.<\/p>\n

The book would have benefited from the attentions of a good line-editor, but it\u2019s so compelling that the continuity errors are easy to overlook. And while this is not a novel I would pass on to my grandmother, or anyone of a sensitive or nervous disposition, if you like your horror as warped as it gets, you\u2019ll love this genuinely scary page-turner. I\u2019m looking forward to reading what she does next \u2013 although I suspect I\u2019ll be reaching for the sominex afterwards.<\/p>\n

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\n\"\"<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

review by Sarah Lotz
\n\"\"<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Published by Generation Next Publications
\nPB 258 pages
\nRRP R150 (Kindle \u00a32.14<\/a>) <\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n

My father’s funeral had been that morning, and Kevin thought a night out would be the best way to take my mind off how he’d died. It hadn’t helped. All I could think about was that I hadn’t been able to say good-bye or tell him that I loved him. I couldn’t even get drunk and forget about it. I couldn’t pretend that I was okay and put on a happy face for the sake of Kevin and his friends. As a result we cut the night short, which irritated Kevin’s friends and I was once again the party pooper.<\/p>\n

Kevin had been gone for what seemed like a few seconds when everything that I knew and trusted in my life changed forever. <\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/td>\n

\"\"
\nFrom Issue 14 (Oct 2011)<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[117,124,23,123],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-issue-14","tag-joan-de-la-haye","tag-sarah-lotz","tag-shadows"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1480,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions\/1480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/somethingwicked.co.za\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}