The Glister

The Glister (John Burnside) 2009 -- kindle edition. 3

The Glister was touted on amazon as a edgy horror novel, and I'll admit I made the purchase with relatively little restraint or forethought. The story -- a depressed town with an old abandoned chemical plant -- experiences the mysterious disappearance of multiple adolescent boys, plus spooky stuff happens -- that was enough for me to give it a chance.

I should have known better. The Glister is written in a rather stream of consciousness manner, but moves across several different perspective (some first person, some not) without the narrative voice changing in any meaningful way. It's full of thick discription that does nothing to either draw you into the story, or to lay groundwork for the plot. It's just there.

I also found the characters flat and unlikeable, and after giving it an honest go (reading the first 30% dutifully), i paged through the rest of the book, just hoping for it to finish as quickly as possible.