NOS4A2 by Joe Hill

[sholio]

In 1980s New Hampshire, a little girl discovers that she has the ability to ride her bike across a covered bridge to find any lost thing, anywhere in the world - at a cost. Meanwhile, a serial killer who preys on children can also take himself in and out of the world in a similar kind of way in a Rolls Royce with the license plate NOS4A2. Inevitably they're going to crash into each other.

I bought this after being sold by the first few pages, and I found the first, oh, third or so of the book incredibly gripping, very twisty and mysterious with wonderful descriptions of 1980s/90s small-town childhood and people grappling with their powers, which come with both soaring highs and terrible lows. The climax was also very good. And in between, there is the middle. I remember thinking around the midpoint of the book that if we've hit this point in the plot already, what's going to happen in the rest of the book? Well, there sure is a lot of it, depressing to the point of feeling in places like misery porn. I read most of the book yesterday, but put it down in the middle of what should have been a gripping action sequence because I just couldn't handle the combination of the villain's absolutely awful viewpoint and the protagonist getting the shit kicked out of her physically and emotionally for the past 200 pages.

But then when I picked it up again this evening, once I slogged onward through a little more of that, the climax turned out to be very good and the ending actually made me cry a little. I feel like it could have stood to be about a third shorter, not necessarily because any specific part of the sequence of events wasn't potentially interesting on its own, but because the cumulative effect of all of it was really hard to take and started to feel repetitive after a while. I don't think we needed quite that much of serial killer POV, meeting interesting people only to have them die, and the heroine being in and out of mental hospitals, being a terrible mom, and getting beat up.

But I liked the ending enough that my overall feelings on the book are very positive! Just ... there was a lot of middle.

I also feel like I need to mention that my used copy of the book had a bookstore receipt (for this book) tucked into it from Bangor, Maine, which under the circumstances feels like it should be the start of another book in this one's genre.


I think part of my overall positive feeling about the book's ending was because I was 100% sure that Lou was going to die, and he didn't! He had a stealth role coming out of nowhere to be my side favorite despite seeming to be a throwaway character at first, while also being absolutely not the kind of person who typically ends up in a protagonist role in an action book (a morbidly obese, tenderhearted mechanic with an enormously nerdy side who frequently quotes comics, Star Wars, etc). But he's just so sweet and brave, and I love that a) he's the main love interest and this never really wavers, and b) part of his arc tends to involve everyone else in his life initially discounting him and then learning to appreciate him too. Also the sheer number of times the book had me convinced that he was going to die, or had just died, plus the generally high body count otherwise, made his eventual survival very much appreciated.

Also, this book makes excellent use of Chekhov's explosives, as well as Chekhov's (literal) gun.

The general concept of the powers taking a toll that specifically chips away at the core of a person's identity every time they're used was fantastically cool and creepy, and I really thought early on that the book was going to be more about a diverse group of people dealing with their powers and the corresponding side effects than it turned out to be. (I mean, it sort of is, but it's also focused extremely heavily on one character, and the toll that it takes isn't evidently connected to her powers; a lot of what happens could have happened anyway.) The one who was particularly affecting is Maggie, the wordsmith who loses a little of her verbal ability every time she uses Scrabble tiles to answer a question ("I didn't always stutter" is such a perfectly timed gut-punch), until she can barely talk at all. I'm far more deeply struck by that type of subtle horror than the gorier aspects of the serial killer plot, although the pocket-universe car was admittedly very creepy.

Comments

[sheron]

That sounds neat! How does the use of powers affect the main character?

[yhlee]

I'm dying to know this too!

[sholio]

See below - basically it chisels away her sanity/memory.

[sholio]

It takes a little of her sanity/memory/grip on reality every time. I think one of my quibbles with the book's worldbuilding is that it really isn't evident that this is what is happening until she actually says so, which is something like 90% of the way through the book. She gets severe headaches and gets sick every time she uses it, and every time she comes back to the bridge it's a little more decrepit, so I assumed it was chiseling away at her physically and her mental health issues were mostly because of other reasons, but it also wrecks her mentally as well.

[yhlee]

Ah, interesting, thank you for the explanation!

[sheron]

I see! Neat :)

[maplemood]

I bounced off one of Joe Hill's short story collections (Twentieth Century Ghosts) partly because it seemed like any fat character who showed up was written as grotesque in some way (also there was all the Stephen King-level ickiness without any of the Stephen King-level sentimentality or hard-won optimism; it's unfair to compare his writing to his dad's, but I was in a mood and just couldn't get myself to like his style). But my sister, who's read NOS482, really loved it and also said Lou was wonderful, so it's been on my TBR for a while now. And the powers chipping away at a person over time is SO creepy, OMG.

[sholio]

Yeah, FWIW I did have a few issues with how he introduces and describes characters, and the fat characters were part of that, but in this book at least, Lou is also a really fantastic character and also portrayed as an object of desire by the protagonist. Being overweight bothers him, but it doesn't bother her. So I really liked that even if I had a nitpick here and there with the descriptions.

[rose_griffes]

I probably won't read this, although it sounds interesting. Because yeah, too much almost any amount of time in the POV of the Truly Awful Villain falls into "No, thank you" territory.

I'm currently reading Lonesome Dove for the first time, which is depressing in its own way. But so far the villain is mostly toxic masculinity, so...

[sholio]

Yeah; in the grand scheme of the entire book there probably isn't that much killer POV, but there's also a fair amount of interaction between the villain and his captives, and I found those parts hard to take.

I really loved the Lonesome Dove miniseries, but never read the book!

NOS4A2

[elderwitty]

Is the title a reference to something vampiric? Who (or what) gets the little bit of the person's core each time, and are those bits somehow sustaining it?

Re: NOS4A2

[sholio]

The title is a private joke on the part of the villain, who draws life out of children to keep himself young.

Who (or what) gets the little bit of the person's core each time, and are those bits somehow sustaining it?

We don't know. It seems to be more of a cosmic-scales-balancing kind of thing than something actually taking it, kind of a "you don't get something for nothing" situation. But there's no actual explanation given in the book for why people get powers or how it works; it just seems to be something that happens to people sometimes.

Re: NOS4A2

[elderwitty]

Thanks for the info!

[holdouttrout]

I liked this one, too! I wasn't quite sure about it at points, but I thought the whole thing was satisfying. I thought the beginning and middle were creepier than the end (even with the epilogue). I loved Vic and ended up loving Lou (although I really didn't need as much of that type of description of his fatness as we got).

[rissabby]

I read this a few years ago, but I can't remember if I finished it. What you write about it, is more interesting than my memories. I might have stopped at some part with pointy teeth. I'll give it another look.

[lokifan]

The one who was particularly affecting is Maggie, the wordsmith who loses a little of her verbal ability every time she uses Scrabble tiles to answer a question ("I didn't always stutter" is such a perfectly timed gut-punch), until she can barely talk at all

eeeeek