[phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 483: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/bbcode.php on line 112: preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4668: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4670: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4671: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) [phpBB Debug] PHP Warning: in file [ROOT]/includes/functions.php on line 4672: Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at [ROOT]/includes/functions.php:3815) Horror World • View topic - My Thoughts On "Frayed" by Tom Piccirilli
(Thought I would repost this here. It's been a while since Frayed came out and I wrote this, but I thought I would share. Hope you don't mind Tom.)
FRAYED By TOM PICCIRILLI
There are some authors who, after you read their novels you get a feelings of elation, excitement, and satisfaction. They usually write tales that are full of action, page turners, and you can’t wait to see what happens next. There are so many great writers out there like this, Keene, King, Laymon, Koonz, gosh, I could go on and on. Their novels are usually well received and go on to sell mega copies.
Then there are authors who, after you read their novels you get a feeling of wonder, dread, and an empty feeling (often of wanting more). These authors usually take their time developing the plots in their books, concentrating on the scenes rather than the buildup to the climax. As a reader you get so involved with their words it doesn’t even pop into your mind what the next chapter is about, you are in the moment, transfixed. There may be a lot of great writers out there who do this, but I guess I just haven’t stumbled upon that many of them yet. I would put Braunbeck, Lebbon, Steve Vernon and Tom Piccirilli on that list.
I am biased. Tom has written one of my favorite novels of all time, November Mourns, and when ever I get my hands on a Piccirilli novel, my expectations are high. In my opinion, Tom has written some excellent novels, some good novels, and some that are just o.k., (and only one real clunker I can think of) and I would say Frayed goes into the excellent category.
I should mention up front that this is a novella, not a full length novel so you’re only getting a fraction of Piccirilli at 5 times the price of a mmpb. But it is worth every penny if you're a Pic fan.
On the surface, this story is about a writer who is visiting his friend, who happens to be another writer, at a mental institution. When he arrives he finds that this is no ordinary nut house. There are bikini clad women swimming in pools, parties all the time, great food, and the “guests” as the patients are called, live in spacious bungalows where pretty women serve as maids and providers.
The two writers were friends growing up but became bitter rivals over artistic jealousy. The men have much in common and have shared agents, women, and a proclivity for violence. The writer who was incarcerated in the mental institution once tried to strangle his visiting buddy with a belt.
Like the best of Pic’s work, this plot line only addresses the obvious and gives hints to its undercurrents, it is up to the reader to take the horror thats presented and personalize it. How many of us has ever had a best friend whom we have been jealous of one time or another?
This novel is about that jealousy, competition, and failure between friends. It concerns how we address those issues as well as the discrepencey between our actions and thoughts. Frayed asks us if we really know how far away we are from being one of those strange people we wind up reading about in the newspapers who make the front page news, or the evening newcasts.
Tom’s writing is fantastic, as potent as in November Mourns, or maybe even better because he packs so much into such a short story.
See below where Tom's protagnonist is having a discussion with the ex wife of his friend:
<<<< ”Taking me out of his life is like taking his past away. Take his past away, and you take his madness away. Take his madness away and he’s not himself anymore. Don’t you understand that?” Nobody else had a grip on that pertinent fact yet except me, but no one else knew him as well as I did either. Not his doctors, not his wives, nobody. “It’s the reason why I visited him. I wanted to see how long my very presence would take to unravel him. It was less than an hour. This is the way it’s always going to be…until one of us dies.”>>>>
And this passage when he is talking to his friend’s doctor:
<<<<We are all imprisoned by our own inertia. The longer I stood there, hunched and gritting my teeth against the pain, waiting for this guy, these people, to get around to asking pointed questions about Jazrael, she who takes vengeance on the world of the luminaries, and what we did on the Isle of Dogs with her, and to her, the more I felt like it was me actually trapped in this crackpot palace.
My thoughts twisted along to every movie I’d ever seen where the split personality only imagines he has a best friend, while everybody else in the story played along, so goddamn certain that they were more clearheaded than the poor schmuck talking in two voices, wearing his two faces.
When you got down to it, you could never be sure of your own sanity. You just had to guess at it. You had to hope that you were never the craziest fuck in the room.>>>>
Frayed is a great read but it may not be for everybody. If you want your endings climatic and well defined you won’t find it here. But if you enjoy thinking while you read, if you like horror that reaches into you and becomes personalized, if you want to close the cover of a book and not want to go onto the next one for a day or two because you’re still digesting the one you just finished, then Frayed would be for you. This one is highly recommended.
Joined: Fri Jan 28, 2005 7:13 pm Posts: 469 Location: CO
_________________ Tom Piccirilli is the author of over 20 novels including SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, and A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN. www.thecoldspot.blogspot.com
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