BOOK REVIEW: Off Season by Jack Ketchum (2006 Leisure Books)

A Review by Scott Lefebvre

     Early on in writing for Scars Magazine, one of my first informally suggested assignments was to write a review of the collected works of Jack Ketchum and prepare for the possibility of performing an interview with the author.   I went to the library to begin my preparatory work, but the works of Jack Ketchum are sadly under-represented in Rhode Island’s state-wide library catalogue.   So the project went on the back burner.

     That is until Ray Dowaliby lent me his signed paperback of “The Author’s Uncut Uncensored Version!” of Off Season accompanied by the necessary warnings that any damage that fell upon the book would be visited upon me threefold.

     This is my first exposure to the horror fiction of Jack Ketchum, but I’m no stranger to the author’s impact on the genre.   I’ve seen Ketchum’s work adapted into an excellent little film titled ‘The Lost’ (2005) directed by Chris Sivertson, which was screened at the 2006 Rhode Island International Horror Film Festival.   I’ve also been in the same room as the author, a guest at the 2006 Rock ‘n’ Shock convention in Worcester, Massachusetts, who prefaced the screening of Sivertson’s ‘The Lost’ at that convention with a preparatory introduction.

     The cover art for the book, a stew kettle hanging from a tripod of bones, the ground surrounding it also strewn by bones, against a backdrop of the mouth of a cave looking out upon an ocean scene, lit by the darkening sunset gives the reader an idea of what they’re getting themselves into before the first page is turned.   It may seem like a spoiler, but allow me to assure you that it’s not a spoiler to divulge that the book is a contemporary retelling of the Sawney Beane legend, set in the wilds of upstate Maine.

     The legend of Sawney Beane, a wild Scottish clan that lived in a cave by the seashore, preying upon travelers until they were forcibly eradicated by a regiment of armed men, is no stranger to adaptation.   Many films such as Wes Craven’s ‘Hills Have Eyes’ series have taken the theme of feral inbred families preying upon unsuspecting travelers.   Other films which adopt the theme are ‘Raw Meat’ (1972); ‘C.H.U.D.’ (1984); ‘Wrong Turn’ (2003) and ‘The Descent’ (2005) to name a few.

     Revealing that the novel is a contemporary retelling of the Sawney Beane legend does little to strip the novel of its ability to hold readers’ attentions.   A small group of couples arrive at a cabin to enjoy a pastoral weekend together, and of course they become fodder for the feral family exemplary of the theme in film and literature often discussed as “the rise of the repressed”, but in this version the poor actually eat the rich.   A victim who survives the predations of the family from the first pages of the novel inspires the investigatory interest of the colorful members of the local law enforcement.     The shallow interactions of the beautiful vacationers from the big city do little to add to the appeal of the characters.   It depends on what the author’s intention was.   If it is meant as character development to enhance the reader’s sympathy for the author’s intended victims, then it is unsuccessful.   If it was intended to reveal the superficiality and sexual-preoccupation of the victims, then it was very successful.   Either way, the self-involved musings of the unsuspecting vacationers are well worth suffering through to reach the final third of the book when the family descends upon the cabin and does what they were born (the product of generations of incestuous interbreeding) to do.

     The final pages of Off Season present the reader with all three threads meeting, and the events that unfold are described with a detail that will satisfy the depraved desires of even the more jaded variety of readers of horror fiction whose collective palette have been numbed by bland black-bound cookie-cutter novels.

     The cover art prepared me for a thin and uninspired representation of the Sawney Beane legend.   Instead Jack Ketchum breathes new life into the old legend and presents readers with an enjoyable exploration of the theme.   Although the character development in the first two-thirds of the book is a bit clichéd and predictable, the last third of the book confounds the expectations of presumptuous readers and had me reading the last third in one sitting, eager to discover what further examples of man’s inhumanity to man, would be exposed detail by lurid, blood-spattered, detail.

     Off Season is definitely not for children, or recommended as an introduction to horror fiction for the faint of heart.   This book is for blood-thirsty fans of the genre desensitized by the bland banality of horror fiction looking for a new and engrossing spin on an old theme.