⇒ Download The Twilight Pariah Single eBook Jeffrey Ford

The Twilight Pariah Single eBook Jeffrey Ford

Download As PDF : The Twilight Pariah Single eBook Jeffrey Ford

The Twilight Pariah Single eBook Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford used to write the kind of book that Stephen King tried to write even at his very best. In all of those books, there was as much delight in the magic of language as there was in the magic, dark and not, shared by the telling of the story. My book shelves would even now be filled with those volumes had I not lent them all out by way of a more personal review than this brief comment.

This book is short and, in that very fact, is a blessing because it is terrible and a short terrible thing is something you are likely to finish which means the purchase price has at least been earned, if not enjoyed.

Mr. Ford has written this book before. It was called The Shadow Year. Siblings in suburbia and violent things that only they notice until they become noticed by them. Read that book, not this book.

In this book, the young teens are millennials getting ready for Brooklyn or some other poorly defined future when evil comes knocking on the door. The dialog is hamstrung, the characters clichéd (Think Mod Squad, just update the diversity) and the mystery not one at all.

The chief metaphor is that things happen outside of our consciousness which can have an adverse effect on others. In this story, it is a waft of smoke from a bad memory. In this review, it is the fleeing nature of Mr. Ford's talent.


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The Twilight Pariah Single eBook Jeffrey Ford Reviews

The Twilight Pariah is a quick read with an excellent premise from author Jeffrey Ford. In the early nineteenth century, a young Marlby Prewitt witnesses a man beating his unruly but innocent dog. That image haunts her, turning into a “thought-form creation,” an idea Ford credits in the novella to the Buddhist practice, quickly turning into a sinister form of demonic possession.

However, Ford adds an element to the possession subgenre by having the thought-formed creature, named Petra, be able to detach from its poor host Marlby and interact with the physical world. When young Marlby Prewitt gets married and pregnant, Petra can also manipulate and “shape” the fetus….

A hundred plus years later we meet one of my favorite recent characters, Maggie, a force-of-nature who is a motivated archeology major. She’s so passionate she convinces our first person narrator, Henry, their mutual best friend Russel and his boyfriend Luther, as well as a professor with a penchant for cryptozoology, to get involved in an unofficial and illegal excavation at the site of the abandoned Prewitt Mansion.

They soon find a fully intact skeleton of what could only be described as a demon baby. The mystery to figure out who the child is and what their discovery means leads to some scary moments and powerful revelations.

The part of Ford’s book that worked best for me was the structure of the premise, the setup of the ‘creature’s rules,’ including some interesting historical looks at early psychiatric and pharmaceutical practice. I’m a satanic horror movie buff, so I’ve seen all of the tropes beaten to death over the years; Ford accomplishes a periphery possession while also adding freshness to the subgenre.

I mean that he makes it pretty clear that the “creature” Petra is a demon formed by the recurring nightmares of a troubled Marlby Prewitt, but doesn’t harp on the satanic elements, and in fact relies more on ghost story conventions in handling it. He also brings needed originality by creating a structure where Petra resides in Marlby’s mind, but exists physically outside the body when the girl drinks a potion called Nepenthe. It’s sort of astral projection, only reversing the physical and soul components.

Ford masterfully weaves thematic elements in this novella as well. The characters are all in their college years, finding themselves. Henry, the narrator, is an aspiring writer who has no idea what to write for a first novel; Maggie, though passionate about archaeology now, has changed her college major four times; Russel’s parents disowned him after he revealed that he was gay.

The theme is finding one’s identity. The physical and the inner parts (mind, soul, heart) of a person struggling to become on, as a sort of dark bildungsroman. Without spoiling the events of the plot, I’ll say that Ford allegorically tackles the dangers of when these two aspects of a person’s identity are separated.

I'll end on a powerful note in the words of Marlby Prewitt

"The memory of that poor dog stayed in my head. At first it was a small bump in my thoughts, like a seed beneath my memory. A while later it started to grow and I could feel it growing. I kept going back to it and touching it with my memory like when you have a loose tooth and you touch it with your tongue. I couldn’t forget it."
Was good but not great. The characters for the most part were well written but there was a lot of it that left you wanting.
Meh, lazy reading that doesn't require a lot of attention. Only read it if you get it for free.
I just had a hysterically fun time reading this. Recommend to fans of King and Straub, though it is uniquely itself. Mouthy, mysterious, and brutal.
Kids and dogs hook me every time even tho this kid is long dead as s the dog, I’m sure. Nonetheless, I enjoyed the “old days” mystery and creepiness that left me without nightmares. Enjoyable.
Purchased for my sister. She really enjoyed it but said the ending needs more. She is hoping for a sequel.
The Twilight Pariah by Jeremy Ford. Honestly, I really didn't like this one, despite having high hopes for it, and barely managed to finish it. Essentially, a trio of kids find a weird skeleton buried beneath the outhouse of an abandoned mansion, which summons some kind of ghostly being that starts killing people. The nature of the being ties into 19th century spiritualism, but I never really found myself scared or even particularly invested in the story. I didn't care for any of the main characters, and even more importantly, I never really felt they were in any real danger even as random people around them got slaughtered by the creature (there's a reason for this, but I don't wanna spoil it). Maybe it's just me, though...I'll give this 3 stars in case other folks might take better to it than I did.
Jeffrey Ford used to write the kind of book that Stephen King tried to write even at his very best. In all of those books, there was as much delight in the magic of language as there was in the magic, dark and not, shared by the telling of the story. My book shelves would even now be filled with those volumes had I not lent them all out by way of a more personal review than this brief comment.

This book is short and, in that very fact, is a blessing because it is terrible and a short terrible thing is something you are likely to finish which means the purchase price has at least been earned, if not enjoyed.

Mr. Ford has written this book before. It was called The Shadow Year. Siblings in suburbia and violent things that only they notice until they become noticed by them. Read that book, not this book.

In this book, the young teens are millennials getting ready for Brooklyn or some other poorly defined future when evil comes knocking on the door. The dialog is hamstrung, the characters clichéd (Think Mod Squad, just update the diversity) and the mystery not one at all.

The chief metaphor is that things happen outside of our consciousness which can have an adverse effect on others. In this story, it is a waft of smoke from a bad memory. In this review, it is the fleeing nature of Mr. Ford's talent.