She Treads Softly: The Pallbearers Club

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

The Pallbearers Club

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay
7/5/22; 288 pages
HarperCollins

The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay is a so-so novel of an unusual relationship and a pseudo-vampire.

Art Barbara started a club for volunteer pallbearers while a senior in high school and it was through this club he met Mercy Brown. She brought her Polaroid camera with her to take pictures of the corpses. This begins the manuscript/memoir of Art, which is what you are reading. Between Art's memories are comments written by Mercy, after the fact, discussing what is in Art's memoir and clarifying various points in it.

I enjoyed the opening of the narrative and then things went off the rail and into a different supernatural direction. I gamely kept with it and found things to appreciate in the changed narrative, but as it progressed, it was increasingly difficult to keep an interest in the plot. This is a wildly unique novel with plenty of strengths and weaknesses. It didn't really work for me, but I could see potential for more appreciation by other readers.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via Edelweiss.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.