Universal Harvester

Starred review from December 12, 2016
Beginning on the cusp of the 2000s and spanning more than 25 years, the second novel from Darnielle (Wolf in White Van) is a slow-burn mystery/thriller whose characters are drawn together by an eerie discovery. In his early 20s, Jeremy Heldt lives with his father, Steve—Jeremy’s mother was killed in a car accident six years before—and bides his time clerking at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa, waiting for better prospects to arise. It’s a steady job that keeps him out of the house, though things turn weird when customers begin to report dark, disjointed, unnerving movies-within-the-movies on their rented VHS tapes. At first reluctant to become involved in tracking down the origin of the clips, Jeremy, at the urging of his acquaintance Stephanie Parsons, uncovers the tragic decades-long story behind the videos and experiences an unsavory side of Iowa that he never imagined could exist. Powerfully evoking the boredom and salt-of-the-earth determination of Jeremy, his friends, and a haunted survivor determined to redress a great loss, Darnielle adeptly juggles multiple stories that collide with chaotic consequences somewhere in the middle of nowhere. With a nod to urban legends and friend-of-a-friend tales, the author prepares readers for the surreal truth, the improbable events that “have form, and shape, and weight, and meaning.” Agent: Chris Parris-Lamb, the Gernert Company.

Starred review from November 15, 2016
It's the late 1990s, and shifts at the Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa, are pretty dull. Jeremy has to get a better job and he's knows itworse, his dad knows it. And then, he fields a couple of complaints. There's something weird on the VHS of She's All That and also the Boris Karloff flick Targets. What Jeremy begins to discover is unnerving: short black-and-white scenes of hooded people in some kind of barn spliced onto the tapes, some of them frightened. With the help of a curious customer, Jeremy track down the source: a strange woman living in an isolated farmhouse. Jeremy's Video Hut boss becomes involved with the woman and her videos, which leads to a tale about the disappearance of a strip-mall church's entire membership. Darnielle's masterfully disturbing follow-up to the National Book Awardnominated Wolf in White Van (2014) reads like several Twilight Zone scripts cut together by a poet. Darnielle fast-forwards, rewinds, and occasionally even ejects the plot to insert a new one, never letting readers establish a footing. All the while, his grasp of the Iowan composure-above-all mindset instills the book with agonizing heartbreak. Memories, Jeremy learns, are impermanent and misleading, no matter what sort of blood and tears you graft onto your copy of Star Trek: First Contact.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

September 15, 2016

Mountain Goats composer/performer Darnielle launched his writing career with 2014's Wolf in White Van, a New York Times best seller that was long-listed for the National Book Award. Here, a young man working at the Video Hut in tiny Nevada, IA, in the late 1990s learns that some of the store's videos contain creepy unrelated footage.

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2016

Far from a midcareer side project, this unsettling second novel from the frontman of indie folk band The Mountain Goats confirms the promise of his National Book Award-nominated debut, Wolf in White Van. Jeremy Heldt is working at the Video Hut in small-town Iowa during the late 1990s when a customer returns her VHS rental, complaining that another movie appears to have been spliced in--not much action, just some faint breathing. Soon after, another customer reports something similar, this one involving a figure in a chair with a bag tied around its head. Jeremy's boss Sarah Jane recognizes the barn in this second video and ultimately gives up the video store trying to find answers. From this spooky premise, Darnielle goes further into an oblique, moving meditation on grief: Jeremy's mother was killed in a car accident when he was younger, and the woman whose barn Sarah Jane identifies lost her mother to a religious sect more than 20 years earlier. Their losses haunt the novel, as does the foreboding Iowa landscape. VERDICT Darnielle's contemporary ghost story may confound with its elusiveness (who is the mysterious "I" narrator?), but its impact will stick with readers. [See Prepub Alert, 8/15/16.]--Michael Pucci, South Orange P.L., NJ

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.