Reviews for Places in the Dark

The average rating for Places in the Dark based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-10-10 00:00:00 Herb Turner This dark and intense novel is written like a Greek tragedy, IMHO. From the flowery passages of the first chapter you'll get both the negative propensity of the narrator and the stolid and exact "at home" environment for the placement of this brothers' tale. Two brothers, their mother and father- and how opposite "eyes" of their offspring's spirits and aptitudes were set into concrete within parental grinding oppositions. As if the "boys" were caught between two glaciers scraping away for far more than just their childhoods and young men "stages". It's the last years of the Great Depression (which were actually worse than all the early 1930's) and in a small town in New England. This is the family that owns, prints the local newspaper- "The Sentinel". It's Thomas H. Cook in his more overblown to poetic lines and 10 adjectives and adverbs a sentence mode. Not at all my favorite mood or style of his at all. And for me, in such a completely tragic tale? Succinct and stark in language would probably seem a better fit? The opposite of frozen aptitude and feeling in words, and the exactitude of them in the personal realities here within such lyrical length and styles of description? Within little ambiance, if anything at all, that holds a "joy" quality in this book that doesn't bridge obsession at the same time. There are crimes and seeking to get answers by Cal, the older brother. And we are left with 1/2 a tale of outcomes and no motives for more than 2/3rds of the book. And knowledge of some evil abuse records of the past beyond the core family. And that leaves Dora, our female interchange link severely affected. And with "an affect" of emotion and cognition that is extremely outlier. Maybe "seeing things" too, that others cannot. Is she a clairvoyant or an empath? Such a dark book. But with such finely honed points to the tragedy. So that in the end you can trace cause/ effect and outcome. But not at all gravel into the insight of the original abuser. So it left a ominous mood, IMHO. This was read on a impulse to read more Cook than I had. But I see so much darkest in the remaining novels that I stop here. It's just exactly a 3 star at the most for me. It almost became a 2.5 star for the way he described Dara's physical reactions to appearances. Cook does the men immensely better than he does the women. And at times he thinks he can capture their mind set from facial or jerk movements when he (my guess only) doesn't have a clue. In this one he has the women far into a territory of stereotype, IMHO. He doesn't do that with the men- they are all defined and carved individuals down to their toes (4 star or better). In total, there are multiples of similes, metaphors and what I would consider flowery phrases in this one. Overwritten. Now to some much happier tales.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-03-10 00:00:00 Hazem Hmoud Another loaded offering from this author. Not sure what you'd call this - obsessive, bent romantic noir? - but it reminded me of those overly dramatic and slightly cheesy black and white movies from the 40s where the men were distinct "types" and the women were either rough-looking broads and whores (the author's words, not mine) or beautiful, suffering victims. The whores here are happy, patient and fulfilled if not overly intelligent, and the intelligent women are anguished disasters. I'm oversimplifying a bit but then so was the author. I could almost hear the orchestra playing in the background. The cause of death of one of the main characters was over-the-top, eye-rollingly unbelievable and almost eclipsed the one genuine surprise in the book. And again, one of the themes here was the abuse and torture of little girls. I did enjoy this more than the others I've read on my Thomas H. Cook reading list, but I'm so over pedophilia as entertainment. 3 stars.