After my last experience with Clive Barker, I wasn't really looking forward to this one. But I've been surprised before so I took a deep breath, plugged my nose, and just went for it. And to my relief it tasted good.
The Yattering and Jack is a great comedy horror piece. The way Barker describes the frustration of the Yattering as it tries so hard to get any kind of response from this completely mellowed out man is hilarious. One of my favorite parts was when he was desperate enough to call his superiors for help begging to be reassigned. The entire premise is a great turnaround on guardian angels and an even better reverse on the typical haunted house. We get to see the "haunting" from the other side of the curtain and the effect great. We even get an exploded cat.
Only two things didn't really work for me in this story. One was the way Barker would switch PoVs from the Yattering to Jack. Several times this happened without preamble of any kind and I had to backtrack to understand who I was with.
The other was how easily duped the Yattering was. I understand that it was just a low level demon and not ment to be super bright. But I just felt it was a bit easy.
That said, I loved the interaction with the daughters and the way Jack had to force himself to ignore one just loosing it. The entire story was good enough that I actually told my wife and in-laws the entire story one night. I was that excited about it. This kind of story is right up my alley, and it gave me hope for the third Barker story we have to read.
We have another Barker story to read? Now I'm excited for it. I was hesitant with this story, too, and was pleasantly surprised I liked it. I liked the POV shifts. Yes, I would have liked for them to have some kind of indication that we just jumped heads, but I got over it. You're right, this is a flipped take on the guardian angel story. We get a peek inside the demon world and playbook. Fun times.
ReplyDeleteLike you, I was pleasantly surprised by this story.
ReplyDeleteI can't agree with you that the Yattering being duped was too easy—because I, too, was duped! It didn't occur to me that Jack had a plan the whole time. I was right there with the Yattering, frustrated at how dull Jack was. So, for me, when it was revealed that Jack wasn't dull at all, I had to accept Yattering's assumptions as reasonable, since I'd had the same assumptions. I credit this to the author's marvelous job of demonstrating just how frustrated the Yattering was, in the Yattering's POV. I found the frustration addictive; I felt it too.
I'll also agree that the resolution felt pretty weak. I think the Yattering is better than that. However, I do like the IDEA of Jack instead driving the Yattering insane (a nice flip on the Yat's driving motivation through the whole story), but how it happened was too rushed and pretty ho-hum.
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