Off Season
Pure and simple: Jack Ketchum knows how to give me The Creeps.
His THE GIRL NEXT DOOR is rightly a modern-day horror classic. No less notorious is his 1980 novel OFF SEASON, now available in “the author’s uncut, uncensored version” from Leisure. It’s not that it concerns cannibals that makes me unsettled. It’s that it concerns children who are cannibals.
Simply plotted but sinisterly potent, OFF SEASON pits a handful of weekend cabin dwellers against a band of feral locals in a small town in Maine. Among the former group are a book editor, her sister and their boyfriends, both current and ex. Among the latter are those who eat the contents of the intestines of those they slaughter. This can’t end well, kids. It’s an all-out, balls-out game of survival whenever the two groups come head to head (no pun intended, though it’d sure be appropriate).
With its relentless sex, violence and detailed gore, it’s designed to push buttons, and does so like a child in an elevator. Admittedly, it operates on auto-pilot for the last third or so, but the tale is so brief – 270ish pages – that it’s hard to take issue with it. Plus, it moves too fast to be taxing. Though it’s far removed from the chilling, it-can-happen-here reality of GIRL NEXT DOOR, Ketchum deserves applause for not wussing out, as well as for pulling off a Hitchcockian stroke of misdirection.
To give you more bang for your buck (or seven of them), Leisure tacks on a short story never before seen in paperback. Titled “Winter Child,” it was excised from Ketchum’s SHE WAKES novel, but holds a not-so-loose connection to this one. Either way, it’s a nice, disturbing little frightener, and a move I’d like to see Leisure do more of. Better yet, though, is Ketchum’s afterword, which explains OFF SEASON’s bumpy, corporate-compromised history from inception to its original, censored printing. It’s eye-opening to see how watered-down Ballantine initially made it; luckily, Leisure restores it to the way it was intended. –Rod Lott
Damn. I was plenty disturbed by the old beat paperback I found a few years ago. I guess I’ll have to get this one.
I hope Leisure releases some of Laymon’s old classics like THE STAKE and SAVAGE, instead of those poorly edited first drafts they’ve been giving us.
[...] Seeing as how he was already in a horror state of mind, Rod looked to the adorable child cannibals of Jack Ketchum’s OFF SEASON. I don’t know about you, Dear Reader, but there really aren’t enough child cannibal books anymore. I see a whole niche there: cannibal spies, cannibal superheroes, etc. I wish that the publishing companies would take a shot with this kind of edgy stuff more often; it really eats at me that they don’t. [...]
[...] I will admit to a definite bias when it comes to Ketchum’s novels. From the first time I read OFF SEASON as a teenager, I knew that here was a writer I could totally hero-worship. So if you’re reading this expecting a negative review, then keep on going, bub. I loves me some Jack Ketchum. [...]
[...] It should come as no surprise to his fans that Ketchum pulls off feats of violence and poignancy with equal aplomb, as in “Olivia: A Monologue,” collected here, but those only familiar with novels like THE GIRL NEXT DOOR and especially OFF SEASON will find themselves pleasantly moved reading these stories. [...]
[...] by Jack Ketchum • THE GIRL NEXT DOOR by Jack Ketchum • LADIES’ NIGHT by Jack Ketchum • OFF SEASON by Jack Ketchum • TRIAGE by Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon and Edward [...]