Special thanks to Tenebrous Press for the ARC copy they provided.
Here we are again with another 10p ARC review! Tenebrous Press’s choices in literature never get old, and I have to say, after reading Carson Winter’s Soft Targets some time back, I am here for whatever Mr. Winter comes up with next. I don’t think anything will ever rival Soft Targets in my mind and heart, but each new release is a new adventure, and Carson takes us on a twisting, turning one in A Spectre is Haunting Greentree.
Starting out, this book feels like an exploration into that well-known troupe ‘a woman flees from a possessive partner,’ but A Spectre is Haunting Greentree becomes so much more than that in a short space. The fleeing isn’t the focus, rather it is the becoming.
Anytime we as people walk away from something that leaves us feeling like “...a mold that other people pour themselves into,” to use Carson’s words, there is a time of becoming that follows. We relearn what it is to be ourselves, and that time of relearning is what struck me most reading this book.
It’s subtle, the way Carson describes and presents this aspect of A Spectre is Haunting Greentree, and it’s quite possible this wasn’t even meant to be the center of the book, but it is what stood out to me most while reading. Carson shows this depth of a person struggling to learn themself through his words, and leaves off where I feel many of us find ourselves, still in the middle of this learning curve.
We never truly learn ourselves, after all, because we are all still becoming.
And in the midst of the horror and disgust of what is rotting in Greentree, Carson’s main character learns herself and finds enough of herself that she can continue on after the horror ends. Carson has a way with words, and this book will not disappoint.
Comments