The Pallbearers Club By Paul Tremblay

Lala BooksandLala

Imagine you're in a movie theatre watching a lonely and slow little indie film following 2 unlikely friends throughout the years, but you think you can vaguely hear an epic vampire movie playing through the walls, three theatres down.

That about sums up the reading experience for this book (and the amount of horror it contains.)

I'm convinced it was written with my exact tastes in mind.

Dan

Back in my younger days, I used to get into hot water on various Horror literature message boards by chiming in on book review threads and proclaiming whatever was being gushed about as "a piece of shit". I had authors and their author friends attack me, e-mail me threats, post threads about what an asshole I was, try to get me banned. In time, I grew to realize that this kind of extreme reaction could be hurtful, so I learned to keep those thoughts to myself. And as I aged, I mellowed. I learned to just put aside books that I didn't like, or try to find something about them that I did.

Well, I'm 51 years old now. It's been a long time since I did this, but: This book is a piece of shit.

THE PALLBEARERS CLUB is being marketed as a Horror novel , with words and phrases on the back-cover promotional copy like "cleverly voiced psychological thriller", "unforgettable and unsettling", "blood-chilling twists", "crackling wit", "immersive, suspenseful", "unforgettable and unsettling".

This book is none of those things, but it is "A piece of shit".

The "story" revolves around Art Barbara, a social outcast High Schooler who suffers from Scoliosis.
He meets a weird girl. Hundreds of pages of navel-gaving and band-name-dropping ensues. Nothing happens. Then, on literally the last page, something happens.

The whole time I was reading (Struggling to read...) this book, I kept thinking "This character (Art), must be Paul Tremblay, because only someone who lived this life could think that hundreds of pages of a character talking about Husker Du, Camper Van Beethoven, etc., would be remotely interesting." (Tremblay states in the acknowledgements that he IS Art, so.....) Are there no Editors to tell him that this is all terribly...
Boring?
Pretentious?
Masturbatory?

Another reviewer on Goodreads states in his review "I found it ok, but I think many people will be angered by it.", which was amazingly prescient, because every time I opened this book, I grew angrier and angrier. How dare they publish this crushing bore? The weird friendship is....not that weird. Not at all interesting. Boring. The book is so floridly overwritten that when something DOES happen, I didn't even catch it because Art's prose is so purple that it just seems like more claptrap.

This was a hard book to get through, but I felt somehow compelled to keep going. I mean, this is a big-name author...SOMETHING must be in store for the reader SOON, right?

No.

Nothing happens. Ever. There is NO STORY, just self-indulgent memory porn and two self-obsessed dud characters.

Sorry to be blunt, and I am CERTAINLY in the minority, but this was...a piece of shit.

Paul

7/18

Music accompaniment?

a playlist from every band or song mentioned in the book created by Copper Dog Book's Jessie Wright:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Yw...

Also, the found/lost demos of The Pallbearers Club. Art Barbara is sneaky:

https://thepallbearersclub.bandcamp.c...

7/10

Hey there, it's out among the living in print and audio. Kindle delayed until 7/19.

1/9

FYI, for anyone reading egalleys, the design of the interior will be quite different for the published book.

One of the novel's characters takes to scribbling comments within the margins of the novel. In the egalleys, those comments are imbedded within the text. (in the published book, those comments will be published as marginalia)

2/2/22

I just wanted to type the date. Also, there's a goodreads giveaway of this book happening RIGHT NOWWWW

karen

NOW AVAILABLE!!

this is a book about the complexities of friendship. it's also about an epic jacket battle* during which kant's ideas about the sublime are used as fightin' words.

clearly, there's a lot going on in tremblay's latest, and ain't none of it easy to summarize intelligibly in a little book report (i do not envy anyone tasked with BISAC-ing this one), but let's give it a shot...

it's a genre-slurry of horror, humor, history, memoir, metafiction, and whatever’s more meta than metafiction. it's also stylistically playful—shaped as the manuscript of a memoir written and rewritten over the course of many years by the pseudonymous art barbara (who is maybe/maybe not tremblay himself). in it, art unpacks the details of his life and decades-long friendship with the also-pseudonymous mercy, who took him under her leather-clad wing when he was an awkward teenager and has been in and out of his life ever since. her influence on him has been profound, life-changing, and, art suspects, maybe even a little diabolical.

now, mercy has stumbled upon art's manuscript, and has taken the opportunity to annotate his version of their relationship, offering feedback and corrections in the margins; contradicting art's memories of their shared experiences, critiquing his writing style and word choices, questioning his portrayal of himself, or of her.

(i am team VERB ALL THE NOUNS!)

through these comments, which alternate between teasing and confrontational, we get two very different perspectives of the central characters and their motives, and some insight into the dynamics of their relationship—a platonic m/f friendship whose central question is not the cheeky "will they or won't they?" but the ominous "is she or isn't she?," and the dark suspicions art has been nursing for years about mercy and her effect on his life (and her furniture) shifts the narrative into spooky, uncanny territory.

they met during art's senior year of high school, when mercy responded to art's ad recruiting members for the pallbearer's club; a group created by art as a sort of professional mourner service for people who died without family and friends to see them off into the great beyond.

a gangly, scoliosis-stooped loner, art was immediately drawn to the enigmatic and effortlessly cool mercy, who became his virgil into pot, punk music, and the wonders of providence, both its contemporary (for them) club scene and its eerie historical legends, like the one about mercy brown, a notable woman whose story is known to all of little rhody's babygoths.

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.

although she's—literally—sidelined, mercy is a vibrant, multifaceted character whose personality shines brighter in her brief comments than in art's smirking/sullen version of her. she can be sarcastic and barbed, pushing back against art's veryserious literary endeavor with some much-needed comic relief:

The rest of this chapter? Jesus, man. The idea that you were going to sell/publish this as a memoir is batshit insane.

but her reactions to what art's written about her are just as often desperately sincere—wounded by his misperceptions of her and her intentions.

That hurt then, and it hurts now reading it.

if art is meant to be paul tremblay/not paul tremblay, it’s not a very kind self-portrait, either in his physical descriptions, his behavior, or his writing skills, which—as art—are frequently turgid and overwritten. concerning the surgery to correct his scoliosis:

I was going to emerge from the surgery physically transformed. Maybe not quite a butterfly poking through a chrysalis, but my kyphotic, cowering body would be radically altered/reconstructed by this time tomorrow. It might not be enough (it would never be enough), but I hoped it might be.

that is a good example of art's prose-stylings; dripping with self-deprecation, laden with ominous foreshadowing and unnecessarily grandiose language, and mercy's more lively, conversational voice is a breath of fresh air as she rewrites his-story, often better, and certainly less self-consciously, than his own version of events.

I sense you leaving, and I want to say a single word that somehow means sorry, please don't go, help me, it's not your fault, I wish it wasn't my fault, goodbye.

I wrap myself around your leg and I sift myself through your very essence. I shark within your cells, and I breathe you all in

—and—

I am losing you and the loss is aching and delicious and bottomless and as addictive as the gain, as the replacing.

You open the door, stand at the precipice, break away, and leave.

mercy accuses him, multiple times, of romanticizing, lying, confabulating, she is incensed at his “libelous portrayal of my dialogue,” but as the book progresses, detailing an aimless life derailed by health issues, paranoia, and substance abuse, her commentary becomes longer and increasingly revealing, and buried beneath mercy's humor and her playful jabs are some heartbreaking realities that eventually—maybe—lead to the truth.

we are all someone's monster, but we don't always get the chance to see our monstrous selves through someone else's eyes, and we don't always get a chance to apologize for what we've done.

i don't know if i succeeded in my goal of summarizing this intelligibly, but i certainly plopped out a lot of words, so imma tie it off here, WITH ONE MERCY-LIKE MARGINAL NOTE:

considering that each chapter of this ~~memoir~~ novel is named for a hüsker dü song, with additional titles snuck into the text (i see you there, The rest of the ride to the city was candy apple gray...), it is BANANAS that
The Girl Who Lives On Heaven Hill did not find its way into the book. BANANAS.

* this is exactly what it sounds like

if you want your copy to have spikes, you're gonna have to DIY—bookstores and libraries frown on that kinda thing.

***************************

oooh, and in the finished book, mercy's text is IN RED!!!

***************************

in this book, the narrator mentions being at club babyhead in the 90s, a club yours truly also frequented in the 90s. therefore, it is within the realm of possibility that karen brissette (the one who is ME, and not the character from tremblay's novel
A Head Full of Ghosts) fictionally crossed paths with the pseudonymous narrator (who may or may not be paul tremblay), at that club or any of the other providence institutions namedropped in this book, and all i gotta say about that is JEEZ, tremblay, stalk much?

and THIS!

it's like he's BAITING me!!

come to my blog!

Sunny (ethel cain’s version)

I feel like I sat on a bench and a narcissistic tall middle aged white man just sat down and wouldn’t stfu and all the sudden my bus isn’t coming any more and I can’t leave.

I grew up in a house of (never-was) has-been rock stars. One of the most pathetic states of humanity.

This is why I read and I knit and I hang out with my community and live a quiet life.

This book is embarrassing and boring. And I know, only boring people are bored. But have mercy..(no pun intended)

Katie Colson

I tried so hard to love this. I have given his books 5 and 4 stars in the past but this missed the mark.

I was a whole ass Nancy Drew while reading this. I was keeping dates written down. I was sluicing through clues like the MI6. And it still fell completely flat.

There were parts of this friendship that I enjoyed. But, overall, this was a huge flop.

Nicole

This book was confusing at times but in the best possible way. It’s uniquely written as the main character Art’s memoir with annotations by other characters in the margins. It took a good chunk of the book to get into because it was like nothing was happening. However, once it did I was hooked! It was creepy and atmospheric and I loved the friendship between the characters Art and Mercy. The horror elements were unique and were interwoven perfectly with real life. Being set in the 80’s I really enjoyed the references as well.

Art Barbara was a seventeen year old living in the eighties who loved hair metal music and was a bit of a loner. As if being a teen wasn’t hard enough, Art suffered from crippling scoliosis therefore he had to wear an unflattering back brace while he slept.
Art comes up with the unconventional idea to start the Pallbearers Club at school. The club was designed to assist low attendance at funerals. The club gets off to a rocky start however, things change when Mercy arrives with her Polaroid camera.
Mercy like Art was unique. She took pictures of corpses and knew a lot about other strange things. The two became fast friends.
Years later in an attempt to make sense of events that occurred, Art writes the Pallbearers Club: A Memoir.

The Pallbearers Club comes out July 5, 2022.

Who’s ready to join the club?!

This was my first physical arc I received. Thank you to Paul Tremblay, HarperCollins, William Morrow, and Kaitlin Harri for giving me the opportunity to read this arc.

myo ⋆｡˚ ❀ *

i thought this was fun! it kept me entertained and the annotations were funny at least. liked the end!! these slow type of books usually aren’t my style but.. this was fun.

Gareth Is Haunted

A horror? A thriller? A vampire story or just one about our mortal condition and friendship? I'll let you decide, because I do not know the answer and I'm happy with that.

'We are our own parasite. We consume our secrets, our thoughts, our memories, our identities. We consume everything and we are consumed by everything.'

What an enjoyable read this was. I've fallen in love with Tremblay's writing already, that's after reading just one book. One written in a very original style too.
The development of the relationship between Art and Mercy was the key to my enjoyment of this read.
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.

I can see this being one of those 'Marmite' books, you either love it or hate it but to me, it seems to be a hugely underrated novel.

I'm upset that I've finished reading, I'll miss you Art and Mercy!

'If hope is believing there will be one more moment of joy, then despair is knowing the was a final one.'

Charlotte May

2.5 ⭐️

Too much weird, not enough clarification.

So this is set up as a memoir, written by Art Barbara (not his real name) about his experiences as a teen and then into his later adult life.
The book is being read by his old friend Mercy Brown (also not her real name) so had loads of notes and opinions on each chapter.

There is an undercurrent of unease throughout the book which I liked, but by the end it just wasn’t clear enough for me.

Not for me sadly, there were parts I liked but overall not my cup of tea.

Sadie Hartmann

Look for my review at Cemetery Dance soon! (If I can find all the right words--this is a unique experience)

Ron

With each book written there has been a play on creativeness from Tremblay, probably never more so than here in The Pallbearer's Club. Ever experimental. The central plot element could be termed the use of a trope to build the plot, but I don't think so. (This is the point where I'd name the thing/trope. But why do that?) This is more the story of growing into oneself in that tricky stage after adolescence into adulthood where you either change into to person you hope to be, or stay the same. “Out” of oneself may even be the better term for Art. The protagonist and antagonist become nearly interchangeable at one point in this story so that by the last third of the telling I questioned, “Who is telling the truth, or is there one?” These were the elements I call good here. I like that the person you'd label a friend may be the catalyst for change in your life, and at the same time not a friend at all. Or better yet, that the character putting his story down on paper (a thinly-veiled Paul Tremblay himself) could be playing a game with me, the reader. Memoir? Or Novel?

If there was a problem, and yes for me there was, it's the ever-explaining wordiness of Art Barbara who writes the memoir here. It doesn't continuously occur though, which makes me wonder if there's a message behind it. The time in between the best plot elements (beginning, middle and a spot-on ending) are not interesting enough to carry the story forward in any way except in passing the years.

Four stars for the originality, and killer ending. Three stars for the in-between.

Matt

boring as fuck, skimmed my way to the end just to see if it got better and it didn’t. this was pretty much just the ramblings of a guy writing a ‘memoir’ about his life, barely even any horror elements to be found

Colleen Scidmore

4 Thoughts on The Pallbears Club-Boring, Long Winded, WTF Did I Just Read, Just Weird

If your looking for a spine tingling thriller this is definitely not it. If you are looking for a boring, long drawn out, confusing look into a love hate relationship between two “friends” with a weird paranormal twist this might be the book for you.

The story itself is a manuscript , and it starts out with “Art Barber” writing a memoir on the heels of turning 50. He has changed the names to protect the identities, but basically it’s a detail of his life, starting at age 17 to the present that chronicles when he first met “Mercy” and the start of their unusual friendship.

Mercy finds the Memoir, which she insists is actually fiction and nothing more than a novel, and corrects where she sees fit. Adding her own details to what she feels Art got wrong. So the reader gets to hear a lot of her narrative on certain parts of the books.

It was the late 80’s and a 17 year old Art Barber was a bit of a dork who had no real friends. His musical tastes were 80’s hair bands and he was unfortunate enough to have a bad case of scoliosis that forced him to wear a monstrous contraption of a neck brace at night. He had dreams of getting out of his home town so he decided to form a club that would look unusual on college applications called The Pallbearers Club. A group (3 max including Art) would attend homeless or other unfortunate souls without families funerals and help carry their caskets.

Mercy seeing one of Art’s fliers about the club decides to join. Mercy was a bit older and in Jr. College, constantly smoked weed, and was way cooler than Art but she seemed to like him and thought the club was interesting. But she had an odd habit of bringing her Polaroid Camera with her and took lots of pictures of the dead. She also knew a bit a freaky folklore that involved digging up the dead.

One night she convinced Art to test a theory by trying to sneak into a cemetery and record an “aura” of the dead but before they can even see foot in Art gets stuck on the fence and the caretaker has to help him down. As Mercy’s driving Art back home she asks if she can spend the night because she’s way too stoned to drive all the way home.
That night while Mercy slept over some unexplained things happened in Art’s house and he cut contact with her completely. But years later adult Art had several run ins with Mercy that he still can’t quite reconcile in his head so he decides to write it all out.

The premise of this book is actually very unique. Unfortunately that is where the positives stop. The Pallbearers Club was boring and slow. It promised an interesting build up but took way too long, and when the reveal came my thoughts were “Wait what..that’s it?!!” I can get behind a slow build up with the right atmosphere, but that was even lacking. There were no goosebumps or creepy feelings at all. It was just like reading a very long manuscript that left me with a very let down feeling at the reveal.

On top of that the book Is supposed to be about their friendship when a lot of the time it focused on Art’s time as an adult sans Mercy. And that was also pretty dull. I got tired of hearing about whatever band he was with and why he always got kicked out. The whole story just fell flat.

As you can probably gather this was not my favorite book. Tbh it kind of makes me sad because I was looking forward to checking out The Cabin at the End of the World, now I’m rethinking that decision. If you are into unique but weird, slow books that really go nowhere until the VERY end this might be for you. 😁

Lauren

Art Barbara is a loser with a spinal condition who starts a club at his high school. He calls it The Pallbearers Club, and meets the strange and seemingly ageless Mercy, who quickly becomes his friend. As their friendship deepens, Art becomes increasingly uncomfortable with his new friend.

This. book. was. horrible. Legitimately so terrible. When it first started, I was like "oh awesome this takes place in a town I know well, this'll be cool" and swiftly had the rug taken out from under me. I could not believe how much I hated the writing, as well as the narrators and their snarky and sarcastic reading of this. I don't know how anyone ever thought this book was creepy at all, because the main guy, Art, loves talking more about himself than anything else. Anything that happens could be interpreted as a friend being a little TOO clingy, but it never goes to a place where I'm creeped out. There is no "OOMF, THERE IT IS" where I can see why or how he's startled by Mercy. This needed to be way shorter, and he needed to write in at least 100 more scares and startling visuals. As it is, it's a fucking snoozefest.

I don't understand what people see in Paul Tremblay's books. They are all half-baked and never have satisfying or startling conclusions, and you have to wade through the most boring bs to get there anyway. This author is becoming prolific, and the hype is 100% not real. Pass pass pass.

megs_bookrack

I'm loving the vibe of the cover. This will look exceptional on my shelves!

Rachel (TheShadesofOrange)

3.0 Stars
This book had a really unique narrative format, which a lot of people will absolutely love… but I did not. I found it very distracting and ended up bouncing back and forth between the audio and written formats to see which might work better. I just found the story to be a bit dry and forgettable. There were lots of nostalgic references which were pretty fun. As for the characters, they reminded me a lot of the pretentious young adults that John Green likes to write. This actually reminded me a lot of Looking For Alaska.I have loved most of Tremblay's previous work, so I was disappointed that it did not click with me.

Melki

The worst is always to come.

Art Barbara (that may not be his real name . . . ) is writing a ~~memoir~~ novel with a little help from a friend. Like many of us, Art's problems stem from high school. That's where he created the Pallbearers Club - a group of volunteers who would attend funeral services and act as pallbearers for the homeless, and the elderly with no remaining family members.

Art became convinced that one of the volunteers was a vampire.

Not like these vampires . . .
description

More like this one . . .

An energy vampire who, over time, slowly sucks away your will to live.

This is not horror in the traditional sense. I doubt it will keep you up nights, though you may want to keep your leather jacket in another room. And, your dresser. I would categorize it as psychological thriller. And, Tremblay's wonderfully skewed sense of humor shines throughout.

A strange and unusual read. Highly recommended to awkward teens and Hüsker Dü fans.

Dennis

This book is very ambitious and it tries to be too many things at the same time. It completely lost my attention because too many storytelling techniques were being used at the same time.

Mique Watson

DNF at 70%. Y’all i don’t have time for this fucking piece of who gives a rat’s ass. Officially done with Paul Tremblay forever. Not for me. Nope.

Jessica Woodbury

So the general concept here is quite good, it's just that the actual execution is surprisingly boring. The book we have is a memoir written by a guy who has chosen the pseudonym Art with comments in the margins from a woman who appears in the book, who he calls Mercy. (I received a galley of this but the formatting was super wonky, I hear the kindle version is delayed, and I bet print is nice with actual notes in the margins and such. I opted for audio, which worked well with two readers going back and forth.) Mercy has notes for Art, plenty of things she says didn't really happen that way, especially when things start veering towards the supernatural.

I went in cold and I recommend you do, too. Thankfully the summary doesn't ruin most of the book, rare these days, and it understands what this book wants to be all about, friendship (and 80's punk music). I wish it really was about those things, I just found the actual plot to not live up to the concept.

Art is boring. There, I said it. Much of the book is his teenage years, where he is appropriately moody and whiny, but he lays it on so thick. And if you didn't notice already, Mercy will point it out to you. Mercy makes some good points! Art could use some edits! And I was surprised at just how little actually happens between Art and Mercy. There are very long breaks where they have no interaction, and I had trouble believing that their friendship was as big a deal as it needed to be for the book to work. Also Art really loves to go on about the bands he likes but I never bought him as a musician, which he ends up being in the later sections. It feels tacked on. As an adult he just isn't fully fleshed out.

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.

One thing I kept thinking during this book was that Art was awfully obsessed with Mercy considering how small of a role she actually played in his life. It actually made me think that there could be an entirely different thing going on here, that thing where the guy gives way too much meaning when he's attracted to the woman involved. I think that probably would have been more realistic, but it wouldn't give us our emotional arc. But it does tell you how unfulfilling the emotional arc was for me.

The end almost saved it for me, it really is so smart with the tension and the back and forth between the two conflicting narratives, that I did come around at least somewhat. It's very possible all the things I didn't like are things Tremblay did on purpose, and they just didn't work for me. I will say, I rarely find a concept that sticks the landing this well. Usually it's all gimmick and then it gradually gets more and more dull from there.

Leo

Unfortunately not my kind of book. Had problems getting invested in the story and it's not something that will stay with me for long

Katie T

I don't know what this book was.
A trip down memory lane about two people engaged in a toxic friendship?
I need to read some interpretations.

Ashley (ashley's little library)

This is definitely one of those books that will have a very particular audience. It's not a thriller or horror story; instead, it's a psychological examination of the dynamic between two friends (frenemies?) over decades with tiny tiny sprinkles of horror throughout. But I LOVED it.

Read in this reading vlog:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ozgqj...

Becky Spratford

STAR review in the April 15 issue of Bookliots and on the blog:
https://raforall.blogspot.com/2022/04...

Three Words That Describe This Book: original, immersive, pervasively creepy

I will gather my thoughts for my full review in the next few days, but everyone take notice-- this is the best Horror novel of 2022 so far.

An amazing psychological horror novel, yes, but also is a thought provoking contemplation of the concept of memory, a deconstruction of the “coming of age” story, & has a fascinating storytelling style both physically on the page but also in how the narration effects the reader.

Here is an example of a note I took: This book is Tremblay's take on coming of age, small town horror first made popular by Stephen King, but like he did for the "Exorcism" novel in A Head Full of Ghosts, he has taken on a tried and true trope as his foundation and transformed it into something so new and original, that it elevates the entire genre as a result.

But in true Tremblay form, it will upset you at your core. It may not break you as badly as Cabin at the End of The World, but it is close.

An intimate novel told as a conversation between its two main players-- Art and Mercy-- as Art writes his "memoir" and Mercy provides her commentary on his "novel." Told from 1988-2017, readers get to know both characters very well, enough to know that while we want to give both a big hug, we cannot trust either.. The result, a story that is both touching and terrifying, snarky and serious, immersive and compelling.

Oh and bonus-- vampires, of the New England variety, well maybe vampires, well yes for sure we learn about a historical vampire. But are they left to history? Or are they real? So cool

This back and forth is also one of Tremblay's signature touches, one I always appreciate. As I wrote in my book, Tremblay is the defining author of 21st Century Psychological Horror and this is another stellar example. Does everything that happens have a rational explanation or is there a supernatural element at play? All the answers are there for either reply and the reader is left to decide. And this leaves a long tail of unease and creepiness, one that will follow the reader for weeks after finishing the book.

Another note: as the book goes on, the playfulness decreases and the terror increases. It's like a sound mixing board. The playful slide moves down and the terror one up and up.

This is also underscored by the physical book itself-- The first chapter is short and punchy and then each chapter gets a little longer, and longer, and longer. This works so well on so many levels, First, the book hooks you into Art, Mercy, their conversation and the story-- their meeting and the origins of the Pallbearers Club. And it is playful. But with each passing chapter, the length and discomfort increase. You are already hooked, and Mercy's margin comments keep you reading, even as the story darkens. You sent to keep going, you don't want to stop reading, and then you get to the end of a chapter and look up. Time has passed, you are feeling unsettled, Mercy also sums it all up. You know you should take a break, the next chapter will be longer and you cannot stop in the middle-- but you know what? You can't stop. You take a deep breath and dice back in. When I write in my book about how all Horror books increase in pacing as you read and that by the last third, I dare you too b able to put out down.... that is true for most Horror novels. But somehow, in this one, Tremblay does it better than I have even seen. What kind of novel gives you longer chapters as the book goes on and yet the pacing increases? None. How did he do that?

A few more notes before I write the review: Frame is the punk rock and Indie rock scenes of the late 80s thru the 90s. I happen to be around the same age as Tremblay and went to college in New England-- so while I knew most every band he mentions, some may miss readers [Yeah Dinosaur Jr.] but Husker Du, the band that frames the entire novel-- chapter titles are from song titles-- most people know them [I hope] and at least can pull up some of the songs on Spotify. That helps to enrich the novel and its atmosphere but if you don't know them or look things up, no big deal. Mercy is there with her commentary to help guide the reader and fills in Art's blanks.

Now I have to get all of these thoughts plus 2 sentences of plot summary into 200 words. Oh and these read likes: For fans of Grady Hendrix and T. Kingfisher-- both. The Venn Diagram of people who like both of those authors will like this book, even if they were not Tremblay fans before this.

Krystal

Time of Death: 137 pages. DNF @ 49%

What a dull offering from Mr Tremblay!

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?

Very disappointed. I thought of pushing through to the end but this was a group read where many people said I needn't bother and I'm more than happy to take that advice. I've got better things to spend my reading time on.

I think a huge part of me not liking this story is because it's just Art going on in these long sentences in long paragraphs and by the end of the sentence I've lost what it was he was trying to say. I read almost half of this book and I still couldn't tell you what happened? I skimmed some and even read the last few pages and all of it was so POINTLESS.

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.

Done and done. I'm out.

myo ⋆｡˚ ❀ *

4.5

don’t know why goodreads keeps removing my reviews… fun and weird <3

PorshaJo

Not what I expected, based on the description. Not an audio book, print should be used just due to how it's 'annotated' by one of the characters.
Won this via a GR Giveaway.

Nina The Wandering Reader

4.5/5 stars rounded up to 5 for Goodreads!

Wow….just wow! This is one of the most unique psychological thriller novels I’ve ever read. It’ll probably take me a while to write a proper review, but I know for a fact it’s best to go into this book blind, and even better if you read along with the audiobook.

I couldn't give this book a perfect 5 stars because there were some parts that felt like sluggish rambling (considering this book is written in mock-memoir form, it kind of makes sense. Memoirs tend to ramble at times.) and I was eager to get back to the meat and potatoes of the story. But the book still deserves so much love for it's uniqueness, for it's heartfelt and unusual friendship between it's two protagonists--I mean I damn near cried at the end.

This book was emotional, endearing, and unsettling…all at the same time. Bravo, Tremblay! Bravo!

Katie

Unfortunatley this was one of my biggest disappointments of the year so far. I read The Cabin At the End of World and enjoyed it and in general hear nothing but praise for Tremblay. This is not a horror novel in any respect - this is a depressing character study...and I had 0 interest in the main character. Full review here -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzLAq...

Title	:	The Pallbearers Club
Author	:	Paul Tremblay
Rating	:
ISBN	:	0063069911
ISBN-10	:	9780063069916
Language	:	English
Format Type	:	Hardcover
Number of Pages	:	278
Publication	:	First published July 5, 2022
Awards	:	Locus Award Horror (2023)

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay

The Pallbearers Club Reviews

The Pallbearers Club Reviews

Releated on The Pallbearers Club