The Overnight Paperback 2nd Print Ramsey Campbell 9781848634916 Books
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SYNOPSIS
A bookstore can be a wonderful, welcoming place of both commerce and curiosity. That's the goal for Woody, an American recently transferred to England to run a branch of Texts. He wants a clean, orderly store and lots of sales to show his bosses when they arrive from the States for a pre-Christmas inspection. Not easy given the shop's location in a foggy strip mall. And things keep going wrong. No matter how often the shelves are put in order before the doors are locked at night, when the staff returns in the morning, books are lying all over the floor, many damp and damaged beyond repair. The store's computers keep acting up-errors appear in brochures and ads and orders disappear completely. And even when the machines are turned off, they seem to glow with a spectral gray light.
The hit-and-run death of an employee in the store's parking lot marks a turning point. One employee accuses another of making sexual advances and they come to blows. Between one sentence and the next, one loses his ability to read. The security monitors display half-seen things crawling between the stacks that vanish before anyone can find them. Desperate, Woody musters his staff for an overnight inventory. When the last customers reluctantly depart, leaving almost-visible trails of slime shining behind them, the doors are locked, sealing Woody and the others inside for a final orgy of shelving. The damp, grey, silent things that have been lurking in the basement and hiding in the fog may move slowly, but they are inexorable.
This bookstore is no haven. It is the doorway to a hell unlike any other.
The Overnight Paperback 2nd Print Ramsey Campbell 9781848634916 Books
Seeing that it was a R. Campbell novel, I thought it was going to be really good. But, I found that it was severely hard to read because in the beginning Campbell gave these detailed synopsis of each person working in this bookstore, TEXTS. I found that the synopsis of the characters could have entirely been left out--just made it draggy. I did not like the over all plot (bookstore with shallow boss and shallow employees). I kept expecting that, at least, someone would catch on and get the hell out of that store! In the end, I thought, "Well, these people were so stupid and non-thinking that they deserved to die." Additionally, the reason for the bookstore being 'haunted' was totally unbelievable and the creatures were not ghosts, etc. What were they?????? Who knows or cares.Product details
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Tags : The Overnight (Paperback 2nd Print) [Ramsey Campbell] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. <b>SYNOPSIS</b> A bookstore can be a wonderful, welcoming place of both commerce and curiosity. That's the goal for Woody,Ramsey Campbell,The Overnight (Paperback 2nd Print),Drugstore Indian Press,1848634919,Horror General
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The Overnight Paperback 2nd Print Ramsey Campbell 9781848634916 Books Reviews
I read The Overnight on a recent trip to the UK from Australia, and I had to read it over several nights, despite being enthralled and engulfed by the gradual creeping fog that gradually swamps our protagonists in the story.
Set in a bookshop in a newly-built commercial estate in the North of England, and managed by a successful (American) company-man, the story is written as only Ramsey Campbell is able. The menace is hinted at; it lurks; it creeps over the threshold of the bookstore like the fog which has surrounded it. There are personality conflicts among the staff, a subtle sense of ‘us and them’ caused by the fact that the manager is ‘foreign,’ and more pointedly by the inclusion of characters with differing life-styles and views. One is gay, another is homophobic; one is keen to impress, another is happy to get away with the bare minimum, and so on.
A key skill of Ramsey Campbell’s is to entice the reader into an everyday scene (much like M.R. James, one of Campbell’s literary forebears,) and to introduce shadow-plays and human foibles in such a way that we’re not immediately certain whether the strange goings-on are substantial, or the result of some psychological interpretation brought on by fatigue, stress, or psychiatric illness, or whether indeed there are supernatural forces at work, threatening to assault us from some other place into our everyday humdrum lives. Do the lines on the pages truly become blurred when one of our lead characters fumbles to read them, or is this a throwback to the days when he was rendered incapable of reading due to stress and bullying? If so, why has that manifestation come back to haunt him now, and what can he do about it? Likewise, the books that are scattered on the floor or rearranged to the level of chaos could be the result of some impish schoolchildren with a dislike for literature, or could this equally be a manifestation of the destructive goal of some mini-mud-goblin?
Besides the main characters, Campbell has included a couple of characters who seem intent to pull up a soft-chair and watch as the events in the bookstore unfold… I found this pair both humorous and intriguing enough to wonder if they represented Mr. Campbell and the reader, enthralled yet incapable or unwilling to change the way the various scenes are acted out. And in the end, they remained an enigma, for which I’m personally grateful, as not all stories need a definite conclusion in my mind.
One other point, which I also made at a recent reading by Ramsey Campbell and Pete Crowther, I believe this story is one of the most suitable candidates for a Ramsey Campbell movie, of which there have been none so far made, at least in in English. For me, it has all the right elements atmosphere, plot, tension between characters, intrigue, suspense and action.
In conclusion, expect this ‘overnight’ shift in the bookstore to forever dwell in the midst of your thoughts should you ever find yourself in a bookstore at night, or working an overnight shift of your own.
I have been trying to get through this book since the day it came out and I give! UNCLE! Boring does not even begin to describe this dreadful piece of schlock...I normally read 3 or 4 books a month and really looked forward to this one, but I have had to break my cardinal rule and just skip from page 160 to the end. And the ending...big disappointment! I'm just glad I saved myself from reading the other pages in between or I'd really have felt cheated.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...
Mr. Campbell takes his time developing the setting and the characters while sadistically reminding me of the worst of every terrible, empty working experience I've ever had. Very atmospheric and creepy. This was my introduction to Ramsey Campbell...I want some more.
Ramsey Campbell's THE OVERNIGHT is sly literature. Make that 'Literature.' I puzzled over the dustjacket cover before I read it, and now I think it is grand.
The book was menacing and funny at the same time. It was a deer fly buzzing round my head that I kept swatting at and missing and still it would not let me be, teasing me with menace, whispering cunning little aside jokes that make me laugh in spite of myself.
The last chapter brought it all together for me, but this is not one I would recommend to my wife. She wants to know exactly what happened, and she would not think the plot moved quickly enough nor that the ending was clear enough.
And for you? Heck, I can't tell. As I say, the writing is excellent and the bookstore setting may appeal to you. Humor and metaphor glow softly in this foggy darkness like fireflies. The author worked for a while at Borders and he takes some stabs at Book Business Bureaucracy, but that isn't exactly what the book is about. And it is so ambiguous that, if you choose to read it, you will simply have to decide for yourself.
I enjoyed it immensely.
I'm now sending for his THE DARKEST PART OF THE WOODS which is extensively blurbed on the back of the dustjacket of THE OVERNIGHT.
Still reading.
Ramsey Campbell is one of the most talented horror writers out there, hands down. Other novels of his I've read are 'The Darkest Park of the Woods' and 'The Long Lost', both of which left me wanting more - more information, more pages, more details. Campbell is the best of the 'show, don't tell' talents, but I always feel a little frustrated that he didn't show quite enough. For instance (and trying not to give anything away here), I would like to have learned more about the historical events whose residue were the basis of the trouble at the bookstore. There's never quite enough of that kind of detail, and I'm sure it's deliberate rather than an oversight (no way could a man this brilliant overlook anything) - a way to show the horror purely from the sufferers' perspective. Well done, but I'd still like the details, you know? Recommended.
Seeing that it was a R. Campbell novel, I thought it was going to be really good. But, I found that it was severely hard to read because in the beginning Campbell gave these detailed synopsis of each person working in this bookstore, TEXTS. I found that the synopsis of the characters could have entirely been left out--just made it draggy. I did not like the over all plot (bookstore with shallow boss and shallow employees). I kept expecting that, at least, someone would catch on and get the hell out of that store! In the end, I thought, "Well, these people were so stupid and non-thinking that they deserved to die." Additionally, the reason for the bookstore being 'haunted' was totally unbelievable and the creatures were not ghosts, etc. What were they?????? Who knows or cares.
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