The Glister

Utterly confused

I would really like to get inside John Burnside's mind to see how this novel came about. The premise is extremely interesting...sinister and unsettling. What exactly is going on in Innertown, a place where no one ever visits and no one ever leaves?

Innertown is known for exactly one thing...a decrepit, condemned chemical plant, which many consider to be the cause of strange diseases attacking its residents. It is not known to the outside world that Innertown is also the place where five young boys have disappeared. Morrison, the insecure constable, found the first boy, but made a regretful mistake in the aftermath. This mistake has changed his life and will ultimately be his demise. The book goes back and forth among different narrators and even tenses.

This novel was such a paradox in that I couldn't stop reading it, yet I still don't know if the mysteries were solved. The reader is under the assumption that what happened to those boys is the central mystery of The Glister. However, I was left with more questions than were answered. I would hope that Burnside did this intentionally. If so, he certainly met his mark, because I was left utterly confused. Read this if you care about a good plot but not a satisfying ending.

MY RATING - 3/5

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A good read!

I enjoyed this book and found it very thrilling. I liked being kept guessing and don't mind the ending being ambiguous. The characters were fresh and real, the story was sinister, the setting was cool and I raced to the end of the book. I'm still thinking about it over 6 weeks later.

I wanted to like it. I really did.

In Glister we find a book that is trying too hard to be smart. The writing is good enough, the story had potential but somehow it does not really pan out. The basic story is that of a town that is dead both figuratively and physically. The giant plant that once was the lifeblood of the community has been closed after years of polluting the people and their environment. Many of the town's inhabitants are sick or dying of diseases that can be traced back to their association with the plant. Now the town is just a shell that is going through the motions but no one is really doing much but just existing. Into this mix throw in an unscrupulous millionaire, an incompetent police officer, a fourteen year old who is trying to make sense of the happenings around him and the disappearances of young boys that remains unsolved and you have what could have been a really good mystery.

Young boys have been going missing from the town for many years. Not much is done to solve the mystery and the boys are all said to have run away for the bright lights of the big city. The author was able to create a setting that draws you in almost from the start. You feel the deadness and desolation of the town as you read and you feel as creeped out by the place as the author wants you want to. As you read of the disappearances, you let your mind ponder what is going on and your excited to find out the truth behind it all. Though the author sometimes spends too much time on describing scenes or people's thoughts, you still read on because you want to see where this is going. The story keeps getting more and more bizarre as you read but you keep reading because something about this town is very odd so bizarre just seems like something that should happen. But then you finally get to the point where enough is enough and you cannot take anymore. The end was this weird, seemingly supernatural ending that in my opinion was the final nail in this story's coffin. It was a mess and it was too bad that all the potential just went nowhere. I really cannot recommend this to anyone because I am not even sure what happened here.

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