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Book Review: Bedbugs by Ben H. Winters
Oct. 18th, 2011 04:16 pmTitle: Bedbugs
Author: Ben H. Winters
Published: Philidelphia: Quirk Books, 2011
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 256
Total Page Count: 110,516
Text Number: 318
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
century_eyes who purchased it used at St. Johns Booksellers
Review: Susan and her family feel blessed to find the perfect home within their budget, but something isn't right: the previous tenants left too quickly, there's problems with the house, and Susan begins to suspect they have a bedbug infestation—or worse. Bedbugs is ridiculous B-grade horror for better and worse. Its premise has potential, and Winters initially achieves a creeping, crawling, albeit transparent atmosphere of dread. It's not art but it is entertainment, consumable and thoughtless, scratching the itch for distraction and a horror story. But as the book progresses, Winters pulls out all the stops. He trades insidious for blatant and skin-crawling for violent, discarding everything in the way of originality and providing the sort of concrete explanation which dismisses the paranoia that proceeds it (and invalidates any potential for psychological horror). There's enough momentum to carry the book to the end, but the conclusions lets it down. It hardly matters, however: this is a few hours of distraction, cheap entertainment, ridiculous, gross, preying on an insect phobia with all the refinement of a when-insects-attack B movie. We picked up this book for two dollars, and I read it while killing an entire day on the train. Under those circumstances, it was a harmless, amusing, intentional waste of time. But under no circumstances can I actually recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
Author: Ben H. Winters
Published: Philidelphia: Quirk Books, 2011
Rating: 2 of 5
Page Count: 256
Total Page Count: 110,516
Text Number: 318
Read Because: personal enjoyment, borrowed from
century_eyes who purchased it used at St. Johns BooksellersReview: Susan and her family feel blessed to find the perfect home within their budget, but something isn't right: the previous tenants left too quickly, there's problems with the house, and Susan begins to suspect they have a bedbug infestation—or worse. Bedbugs is ridiculous B-grade horror for better and worse. Its premise has potential, and Winters initially achieves a creeping, crawling, albeit transparent atmosphere of dread. It's not art but it is entertainment, consumable and thoughtless, scratching the itch for distraction and a horror story. But as the book progresses, Winters pulls out all the stops. He trades insidious for blatant and skin-crawling for violent, discarding everything in the way of originality and providing the sort of concrete explanation which dismisses the paranoia that proceeds it (and invalidates any potential for psychological horror). There's enough momentum to carry the book to the end, but the conclusions lets it down. It hardly matters, however: this is a few hours of distraction, cheap entertainment, ridiculous, gross, preying on an insect phobia with all the refinement of a when-insects-attack B movie. We picked up this book for two dollars, and I read it while killing an entire day on the train. Under those circumstances, it was a harmless, amusing, intentional waste of time. But under no circumstances can I actually recommend it.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
