Blogging from notes scribbled during our latest bout with Covid, acquired on a return trip with a two-hour delay at our layover at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. First up-my (non-spoilery) thoughts on Grady Hendrix's novel My Best Friend's Exorcism, both the novel and the film adaptation.
During my non-sleeping, bed-bound and deck moments, just to soak up Vitamim D and get some fresh air and space in self-isolation, I finished Grady Hendrix's My Best Friend's Exorcism. It's nostalgia-drenched (set in 1988), but pleasantly so. Grady's book has great summer horror-flick feel to it, with tons of heart, not to mention that the novel is plain fun.Thank you kindly, Cole Lavergne, for recommending this yarn a ways back.
I feel an affinity for Hendrix's blend of horror, pithiness, humor and literary sensibilities. In my first novel Town & Train and my new short-story collection Fear Itself, there are often equal amounts humanity, horror ... and humor.
My Best Friend's Exorcism was also charming, as well as amusing. But I was so charmed that I almost didn't notice that Hendrix never explained the how? of the possession. Hendrix found a superb eerie setting in the blockhouse where Abby wanders, looking for Gretchen during an excellent failed-LSD-trip scene. But how the demon possessed Gretchen is never quite explained, nor where. I re-read sections, seeking answers to the where and how queries. Gretchen does explain that a man was waiting for her in the woods, "bigger than a person should be." And there is a sort of sentient darkness in the blockhouse that Hendrix does not elaborate further on. I think that Hendrix missed an opportunity in exploring the history/mystery of the blockhouse, beyond allusions that dark rituals occurred there.
But other than that-what a superb novel. I was about the protagonists' ages in '88. There's a reason my Train book occurs in '90 (when I was seventeen).
Have you seen the film of MBFE? Ironically, in the adaptation on Prime, they expand on the blockhouse mythos, arguably improving this element of the novel, making it a derelict old house with a history.
I feel an affinity for Hendrix's blend of horror, pithiness, humor and literary sensibilities. In my first novel Town & Train and my new short-story collection Fear Itself, there are often equal amounts humanity, horror ... and humor.
My Best Friend's Exorcism was also charming, as well as amusing. But I was so charmed that I almost didn't notice that Hendrix never explained the how? of the possession. Hendrix found a superb eerie setting in the blockhouse where Abby wanders, looking for Gretchen during an excellent failed-LSD-trip scene. But how the demon possessed Gretchen is never quite explained, nor where. I re-read sections, seeking answers to the where and how queries. Gretchen does explain that a man was waiting for her in the woods, "bigger than a person should be." And there is a sort of sentient darkness in the blockhouse that Hendrix does not elaborate further on. I think that Hendrix missed an opportunity in exploring the history/mystery of the blockhouse, beyond allusions that dark rituals occurred there.
But other than that-what a superb novel. I was about the protagonists' ages in '88. There's a reason my Train book occurs in '90 (when I was seventeen).
Have you seen the film of MBFE? Ironically, in the adaptation on Prime, they expand on the blockhouse mythos, arguably improving this element of the novel, making it a derelict old house with a history.
Unfortunately for us readers, the screenplay stripmines much of the charm, tension, as well as set-up/build-up/payoff of the novel that Hendrix gleefully excels at, replacing this instead with a plot-by-numbers script that stumbles along with the bluntness of a two-by-four.
Gone is Abby's Mickey Mouse ringtone, for example, or her tough-as-nails-shift-working mom or her down-on-his-luck dad, and all the great class warfare commentary about Abby's working-class family and the wealthy families of friend Margaret and, of course, Gretchen, whose parents admit they hoped the girls' friendship would raise Abby up. The luxurious homes remain set pieces only. There's some fine casting in the roles of Abby and Gretchen, but, alas, I still find myself unable to finish the flick in one sitting.
