Review: Candles Burning by Tabitha King and Michael McDowell

Title: Candles Burning
Author: Tabitha King and Michael McDowell
Genre: Horror
Grade: A-
Reason for Reading: I validated the book for Bookshare, and though I only really skimmed it on validation, I thought the story looked fascinating.

Synopsis:

An extraordinary southern saga begun by Michael McDowell and finished after his death by Tabitha King.

Known for his chilling Blackwater series, author Michael McDowell left behind the unfinished manuscript for Candles Burning upon his death in 1999. In the spirit of the ghost stories that Michael loved, Tabitha King has taken up where he left off, weaving a Southern gothic fabric of murder, guilt, innocence, corruption, and survival, in the voices of the living and the dead.

Calliope “Calley” Dakin is just seven when her beloved father is tortured, murdered, and dismembered by two women with no discernible motivation. In the aftermath, Calley and her mother find themselves caught up in inexplicable events that exile them to Pensacola Beach, where-in a house that’s a dead ringer for Calley’s late great-grandmother’s house-a woman awaits their presence. For Calley is no normal little girl.

My Thoughts: I don’t read horror all that often. Mostly because even when it’s good horror I really don’t think I’d enjoy a constant diet of books that scare me. That being said, the horror in this book is largely subtle. There are a few supernatural events, but nothing is scarier here than the horror of the things people will do to each other.

I adored Calley as a heroine. She starts out the book a typical bratty seven-year-old who is wise beyond her years. She hears and sees things that nobody else around her does. She was a fascinating little girl, and I loved her narrative voice and the wry way in which she told the story. I especially loved that she didn’t sugar-coat her life. She knows as well as the reader does that her mother is a selfish, vain, shallow woman who really doesn’t like her very much, but Calley loves her in spite of all that.

The plot unfolds slowly, but rather than bog the story down with its deliberate pacing, it kept me drawn in. This is not a book to read quickly, and in fact I have a feeling I will be rereading it again at some point, because I’m pretty sure there are a lot of nuances I missed the first time around. McDowell and King manage to convey a definite sense of atmosphere here. Obviously, the book takes place in a time and place before I was born, but I really felt like I understood the South of the 1950’s as I read, and it was a horrible, fascinating place.

If I have any quibbles, it’s that the answers, when they are all revealed, all happen in a rush, and there’s not really any big major confrontation. I think I would have preferred for the last bit of the book to have been drawn out just a little bit more so that I could digest what had actually happened.

Aside from that, though, this book very much deserves the A grade, and I recommend it highly for anyone who enjoys Southern gothic stories.