'Robert R. McCammon’s Boy’s Life meets H. P. Lovecraft in Wild Spaces, a foreboding, sensual coming-of-age debut in which the corrosive nature of family secrets and toxic relatives assume eldritch proportions.
'An eleven-year-old boy lives an idyllic childhood exploring the remote coastal plains and wetlands of South Carolina alongside his parents and his dog Teach. But when the boy’s eerie and estranged grandfather shows up one day with no warning, cracks begin to form as hidden secrets resurface that his parents refuse to explain.
'The longer his grandfather outstays his welcome and the greater the tension between the adults grows, the more the boy feels something within him changing —physically—into something his grandfather welcomes and his mother fears. Something abyssal. Something monstrous.'
It seems like cosmic, unknowable horror has become linked with the sea, and the odd creatures that call it home, thanks to the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Whilst I do like Lovecraft's work, and the things that he created (and were inspired by his mythology) sometimes it feels like authors try to stick too closely to what he did when crafting their own horror tales. Wild Spaces is much like this, and the sea plays an important role in this story of a destruction of a perfect, loving family.
Wild Spaces introduces readers a to family living in South Carolina, an 11-year-old boy and his dog, Teach, along with his mother and father. None of the family receive names, and are referred to only in their roles within the family, and as such it's sometimes hard to see them as actual characters rather than just roles in the story. That being said, Coney does take some time to flesh the parents out a little, at least telling us what they do outside of their family roles, with the father studying endangered clams, and the mother writing pirate history books.
The four of them, the tree humans and the dog, have settled into a decent life, and are happy. However, when the mothers father, the grandfather, arrives one day things begin to change. The narrative gives the impression that the mother and the grandfather are somewhat estranged and that they haven't seen each other in a while. Inviting himself to stay, the grandfather slowly begins to disrupt their lives and their happiness. He makes thinly veiled insults and jabs, and fractures begin to form within the family. When the boy begins to 'change' it starts a series of events that will result in tragedy.
Wild Spaces often times felt like a vague book to me, the family weren't given names, the histories that play an important part in the story are only implied, and the horror is breifly touched upon and never explained. I'm sure that this was done in a way to make the horror feel more real, that the unkowable parts were made in order to get under the readers skin and upset them, and that the family not having names was done to make it feel like a story that could happen to anyone. But, to me, it felt like I was reading something partly finished, something that wasn't quite fully formed.
The book is very short, just over 100 pages, and with the lack of any real depth in the characters and the story I kept feeling like I was reading a rough draft, something that was yet to be filled in and fleshed out. Because of this, I failed to connect with the story, and by the time the horror elements were introduced I was already too bored to really care. I know that this is an issue with myself, and that there are a lot of positive reviews and ratings for the book online. I think this is just a case of me not being the right audience for the book; which does happen from time to time.
As such, my final score represents only my own personal experience in reading Wild Spaces, and your experience could be completely different. The writing itself is decent, and S.L. Coney clearly has a lot of talent, the writing just wasn't what I like. If you're interested in cosmic horror, strange occurrences, or simply want to read something a bit different give Wild Spaces a try. If you don't like it it's only a short commitment, but you might just end up loving it.
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