The Night Country

by Stewart O'Nan

Review by Stephen Clark

Five teenagers, high on life, career their car off the road directly hitting a tree. Three die instantly, one receives severe head trauma resulting in brain damage while the fifth member emerges unscathed. It’s Midnight. And it’s Halloween.

A year to the day and the story follows Tim (the surviving member) trying to deal with a life that has no meaning any more. He works an evening shift at the local supermarket (along with brain damaged Kyle) filling shelves and collecting carts, remembering his lost friends and Danielle, his girl. Brooks is the local police officer who first arrived on the scene after the crash and since then has been watching the boys during his patrol like an unwanted guardian. There’s a connection between them that unfolds throughout the story so I won’t give anything away there.

We also follow the ones that didn’t survive the crash. They are drawn to watch over all involved on that fateful night, observing without being able to be heard. And it seems as though they know what’s going to happen come this Halloween midnight, something that cannot be stopped even if they wanted it to.

This is the first Stewart O’ Nan novel I’ve read and I liked it. With a very literary tone to his writing it commands your attention from the very first page. Setting the mood for teenage angst and for lives without focus, you’d be hard put to find another Halloween tale that delivers such despair – the dead come across more alive than the ones left to cope with the grief!

I have to concede that the whole situation the characters are involved in is very depressing. There are no glimmers of hope out there, nothing that the reader can secretly wish for – it’s a roller coaster ride of emotion but one that the writer pulls off with great skill. A tale to read come Halloween.

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2003

ISBN: 0374222150 - Hardcover (240 pages)

Publisher: Bloomsbury 2004

ISBN: 0-7475-7169-4 - Hardback (229 pages)