Book Review: A Winter Haunting

It is that time of year again when I like to sit down and read a few scary books.  Nothing is better when the weather turns cold than curling up with book that spooks you and makes the odd noises in your house more ominous.  So I went through my through To Read Pile selecting five or six books that hopefully fill the bill.  First up is Dan Simmons’ A Winter Haunting.  This is a novel I have been meaning to read for some time but have never got around to it.  I did not realize that it was sequel to earlier novel, Summer of Night.  The other reviews indicate it was helpful to read the other novel, but not necessary.    

A Winter Haunting is the tale of Professor Dale Stewart and his descent into madness.  Dale has had a bad run of it for the last several years.  He cheated on his wife with a graduate student causing his wife and his two girls to leave him.  Then the graduate student left him to pursue her studies at Princeton.  He began to suffer from depression and unable to sleep at night.  He cannot even commit suicide properly.  Dale had the shotgun in his mouth, pulled the trigger but the shell did not fire.  It seems things are not going well at all for Professor Stewart.  But then again most of these problems are of his making.

So Dale decides that he needs a change of scenery to get his head straight and finish the novel he is working on.  He decides to move to his boyhood town of Elm Haven, IL.  This is a great idea as his novel is about his summer of 1960 and the adventures that he and his shared.  Unfortunately, Dale has a hard time remembering certain horrific details about that summer, especially how his friend Duane McBride was killed.  It is my understanding that this was the story Dan Simmons’ Summer of Night which was a cross of The Body aka Stand by Me and It.  So, is it necessary to read the first novel to follow the events in this book?  My answer would be yes as there are events in the novel that made no sense and was hopefully covered in Summer of Night. 

The question is, was this book filled with tension and did creep me out?  For the most part the answer is no.  The first three-quarters of the story plods along with portions of the story alternating between his exploits in Elm Haven and the details of his extra-martial affair.  This would be fine if the character was in any way interesting.  Stephen King is the masters of building up his characters to a point were you care about them and making you squirm for the rest of the novel while he messes with them.  In this respect Dan Simmons falls short. 

There are some real creepy events in the last 100 pages that really started to make the novel interesting.  Some of them are bit contrived but work in the context of the novel.  At the conclusion Mr. Simmons takes a left turn back into reality and in my opinion spoils the ending.  I would have liked for him to push his story to the next level instead of taking the safe route. 

In Essence, there is a long build up to an exciting conclusion but instead of allowing certain forces to unleashed Mr. Simmons takes the least interesting way out of his novel.  It would be as if Stanley Kubrick changed the ending of his superb movie The Shining to have a bunch of thugs burn down the hotel allowing the Torrances to escape.  All of the moody tension and horror built up during the movie would have gone for not.