Editorial Content for The Pallbearers Club
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Reviewer (text)
Paul Tremblay just keeps getting better, and THE PALLBEARERS CLUB may be his most transcendent work to date. It’s a psychological thriller, a horror novel and a coming-of-age tale, and has enough appropriate humor sprinkled in without ever being campy. The book threatens to reach cult status, which is the highest compliment I can give it.
"Paul Tremblay just keeps getting better, and THE PALLBEARERS CLUB may be his most transcendent work to date.... The book threatens to reach cult status, which is the highest compliment I can give it."
Before I discuss the plot, I need to talk about the style. It is treated like a work of “found footage.” The story was written by Art Barbara (not his real name) but is “edited” by his best (and most unique) friend, Mercy Brown. Throughout the novel, you will see the red pen that an editor typically would use to make corrections and comments. There are also lots of notes from Mercy at the conclusion of each chapter. Several pages at the end tie everything up nicely, and are incredibly moving and touching. This is a credit to Tremblay, who is operating at his most effective level.
Seventeen-year-old Art Barbara is not cool, and he is well aware of this. He is six feet tall, extremely thin and lanky, and does not have many friends. So, as a senior in high school, he decides to start the Pallbearers Club. Members will volunteer to act as pallbearers at funerals that are poorly attended. Since Art isn’t very popular, he only gets two people to join at first, but putting up flyers advertising the club gets him an additional member: Mercy Brown. Art and Mercy bond over music and their love of such genres as punk, post-punk and goth.
At the center of the novel is the written interview that is done between Art and Mercy, “Interview with Mercy Brown, a New England Vampire.” While they are obviously working off of the same model that Anne Rice used for her famous work, research and headstones show that there was a person named Mercy Brown in New England. You the reader must decide if Art’s friend is indeed a vampire. Your feelings about this will determine how you approach the last few pages of the book, which are penned by Mercy.
As you hold THE PALLBEARERS CLUB in your hands, you are unwittingly a member of the club as well. It is stated at one point (and quite cleverly, I must add) that a book is a coffin because it holds a body, sometimes more than one, and we are there to witness, mourn and celebrate. I could not have said it better myself. Huzzah!
Teaser
Art Barbara was a 17-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. His new friend brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses. Okay, that part was a little weird. So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things --- terrifying things --- that happened when she was around, usually at night. Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she’s making cuts.
Promo
Art Barbara was a 17-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. His new friend brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses. Okay, that part was a little weird. So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things --- terrifying things --- that happened when she was around, usually at night. Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she’s making cuts.
About the Book
A cleverly voiced psychological thriller about an unforgettable --- and unsettling --- friendship, with blood-chilling twists, crackling wit and a thrumming pulse in its veins --- from the nationally bestselling author of THE CABIN AT THE END OF THE WORLD and SURVIVOR SONG.
What if the coolest girl you’ve ever met decided to be your friend?
Art Barbara was so not cool. He was a 17-year-old high school loner in the late 1980s who listened to hair metal, had to wear a monstrous back-brace at night for his scoliosis, and started an extracurricular club for volunteer pallbearers at poorly attended funerals. But his new friend thought the Pallbearers Club was cool. And she brought along her Polaroid camera to take pictures of the corpses.
Okay, that part was a little weird.
So was her obsessive knowledge of a notorious bit of New England folklore that involved digging up the dead. And there were other strange things --- terrifying things --- that happened when she was around, usually at night. But she was his friend, so it was okay, right?
Decades later, Art tries to make sense of it all by writing The Pallbearers Club: A Memoir. But somehow this friend got her hands on the manuscript and, well, she has some issues with it. And now she’s making cuts.
Seamlessly blurring the lines between fiction and memory, the supernatural and the mundane, THE PALLBEARERS CLUB is an immersive, suspenseful portrait of an unusual and disconcerting relationship.
Audiobook available; read by Graham Halstead, Xe Sands and Elizabeth Wiley
