I thought Ghost Story, by Peter Straub, would be a ghost story, but in reality it was so much more. Yes, there were ghosts. There were even a few zombie-like creatures, but there was also a hidden world and monsters that populated the world the protagonists never fully understood. The rambling path of the story with the time jumps to the past, present, and future helped to cement these feeling of disjointed reality. The blizzard burying the town of Milburn serves the same purpose and also adds to the isolation of the characters. These aspects fit a ghost story, but as the story goes on, it is revealed that Anna Moystn, and all the other ladies bearing the initials of A.M, are all reincarnations of Eva Galli, a creature called a nightwatcher and not a ghost at all.
The revelation that the antagonist is an immortal shape-shifter was not something I was expecting. Eva Galli appears, she captivates the town, and then she is accidentally killed because of her lack of humanity is finally revealed. And for fifty years, she patiently stalks the members of the Chowder Society, the men that killed her, and finds time to bring the younger Wanderly into the mix. Through all this, there is no explanation of why she is doing what she does. Eva and the other nightwatchers believe they are better than humanity; their arrogance is a given, but nothing in her interactions with the men she stalks is there an explanation of why she latches onto them for such a long time and one that would continue if Wanderly didn’t entertain the thought of killing a small child he is convinced is the new A.M.
The slow reveal of the Eva’s true origins kept the novel interesting. I kept reading and wanted to know, and the characters, unlike those found in Hell House, were interesting and I wanted to see them prevail even as the members of the society were slowly picked off by their adversary.
Ramblings of Jhenry 