The Remaking

August 1, 2019
After a mother and her daughter are murdered, their legacy evolves into a ghost story that haunts generations. Horror on film is relatively easy: jump scares, gore, the occasional torture porn, and always the final girls. Horror in fiction is a little trickier, but occasionally you get something special like Mark Z. Danielewski's puzzle box, House of Leaves (2000), John Ajvide Lindqvist's Let the Right One In (2007), or, more recently, Josh Malerman's runaway hit Bird Box (2014). Chapman's (Nothing Untoward, 2017, etc.) spooky story solidly fits the mold of nothing you've ever read before. The book is divided into quarters, each entirely original yet always connected and deeply unnerving. The opener finds an old coot recounting the story of a woman named Ella Loise Ford, known to the small town of Pilot's Creek, Virginia, to be a witch. The men in the town don't take kindly to this, and in 1931, they set the woman ablaze, along with her young daughter, Jessica, whose resting place would become the legend known as "The Witch Girl's Grave at Pilot's Creek." Jump forward to 1971, and their story is being made into a B-quality horror film directed by an obsessive filmmaker and starring a young ingénue named Amber who discovers these terrifying woods hold much more than just rumors. By the mid-1990s, Amber, now a burned-out, Klonopin-addicted scream queen, takes over the story to recall her role in an ill-fated remake of the cult classic that nearly killed her. By the modern day, there's yet another shift, as a budding podcaster named Nate Denison tracks down an aged Amber to discover what's really waiting out there in the woods. Something like Stephen King's imperfect masterpiece The Shining (1977), this book is not always completely coherent, but it's a deeply eerie and evocative portrayal of what it's like to stare into the abyss and find something there waiting for you. A memorable, disquieting ghost story about stories, rendered inside a Möbius strip.

COPYRIGHT(2019) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 15, 2019
"The Witch Girl of Pilot's Creek" is an urban legend based on Ella Louise Ford and her daughter Jessica, who in 1931 were blamed when a baby was stillborn after the mother took one of Ella's herbal remedies, and were burned as witches. The townsmen buried Ella in the woods and then buried Jessica under six feet of concrete in a grave surrounded by crosses. Locals say that Jessica rises from the grave on the anniversary of her death. When a former resident comes home to make a film based on Jessica's story, he unleashes a series of events that show why it's best to leave ghosts alone. His horror film becomes a cult classic, trapping the actress who plays Jessica in that role. Decades later, a remake is planned and she is called out of obscurity to star as Ella. Jumping through time from the 70s to the 90s to 2016, Chapman slowly builds the tension and frights. As both a novel of psychological terror and a traditional ghost story, this short, chilling read is recommended for all collections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)