I have this really weird habit lately of reading books just based on their movie trailers. That’s what I did with White Bird in a Blizzard and now with Horns. I saw the trailer thanks to my sister-in-law Cassidy sending it to me and the trailer looked so interesting that, as soon as I saw the text “BASED ON THE BEST-SELLING NOVEL” I stopped the trailer (because I HATE SPOILERS) and downloaded the book from my library’s e-collection.
Here is the synopsis from its Goodreads page:
Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples.
At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real.
Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more—he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.
But Merrin’s death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . .
Now Ig is possessed of a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look—a macabre talent he intends to use to find the monster who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It’s time for a little revenge. . . . It’s time the devil had his due. . . .
I can give this book 5 stars for its story but only 2 stars for its flow. The plot was creative from start to finish, and not to be cynical but a plot that takes me by surprise is pretty rare with how much I read. One of the scenes had so many beautiful passages that I ended up highlighting entire pages.
The flow of the book was abysmal. Certain scenes draggggggggged. And yes, all of those g’s are appropriate here. I really think this book needed more editing as the scenes were so very long that you wouldn’t even need to cut them out entirely, just simply shorten them to make them a little more bearable.
The movie started out pretty true to the book but then deviated at the end, when, in my opinion, it would have been most important for it to stay on track. I think it was a case of simply not having time to pack in the important, subtle parts of the story into a movie’s timeframe. For instance, the killer who is the solution to the mystery Ig is trying to solve is set up much much better in the novel. In fact, he or she has his or her (notice the non-specific pronouns to avoid spoilers?) own subplot that really makes the ending almost ache with suspense. In other words, the real end isn’t just the answer to the query but is beyond that.
The movie definitely had to simplify the story but was able to keep in a lot of the humor that I enjoyed in the book. But, despite the book’s parts that dragged, I can’t really recommend it over the movie. I’d still say the book was better.
What did you think of this book. It’s pretty “out-there”, does it interest you based on the synopsis?
