American Elsewhere

Publishers Weekly

Bennett (The Troupe) gives the idealized image of the American dream a pan-dimensional twist with this alien invasion tale, part Bradbury and part L’Engle with a dash of Edward Scissorhands. Mona Bright, a former cop with a tragic past, inherits her long-dead mother’s house in Wink, N. Mex., a picture-perfect hamlet built as a support community for a government lab conducting experiments in quantum physics. As Mona pieces together a history that bears no resemblance to the childhood she remembers, Bennett’s epic narrative unveils a chronicle of dysfunction masked by Wink’s mechanical obsession with normalcy. The quibbling, displaced characters are vile and sympathetic by turns, and always startlingly American. Through sharp empathetic detail, the horrific becomes both achingly poignant and comic; a wholesome diner where no one can ever order just one piece of pie shares space with a harsh alien landscape where a quivering blue imp cowers in terror while pleading for his life. Readers will be captivated from start to finish. (Feb.)

The Guardian (UK)

"Mr. Shivers is a startling debut, a deft amalgam of thriller, cerebral horror and American gothic, written with a stark and artful simplicity that complements the examination of struggling humanity pushed to its limits."

Booklist

"The novel starts out curious and odd but quickly becomes terrifying and haunting, as the author reveals more about the people of Wink, who just may be the most curious and intimidating collection of folks you're likely to meet outside the pages of Stephen King.... A beautifully written, claustrophobic, and deeply memorable horror novel."

RT Book Reviews

"Bennett's novel may remind readers of the early works of Stephen King, presenting a small town where nothing is what it seems.... Bennett's work also evokes a mood similar to that of Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, where every darkness may swallow a person only to spit them out into a place akin to Wonderland."

Los Angeles Times

"American Elsewhere conjures up echoes of the best works of Ray Bradbury and Stephen King. ... American Elsewhere manages to surprise, terrify and move the reader."

Library Journal

Since tragedy struck ex-cop Mona Bright a few years back, she’s traveled from city to city, never staying in one place for long. When her father dies, she learns that she’s inherited a house that was left to him by her mother, who committed suicide when Mona was very young. So, she climbs into her dad’s cherry-red ’69 Dodge Charger and makes her way to Wink, NM, a town not found on any map, frozen in Atomic Age domesticity, and shadowed by the Coburn National Laboratory and Observatory. Everything seems picture perfect in Wink (except for the warning to stay inside at night), and Mona imagines settling down until she learns her mother may have once been much more than the thin, wasted shell of a woman she knew as a child. Soon it is revealed to Mona that there’s more to Wink than meets the eye, and answers seem to lie at Coburn and in her mother’s mysterious past.

Verdict Bennett (Mr. Shivers; The Company Man; The Troupe), winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and the Edgar Award, takes us on a creepy, thrilling journey into a small town under a pink moon, where reality is relative and whose residents are very, very different. You’ll want to linger over this riveting and scary novel that straddles sf and suspense to startling effect. This wonderful offering is perfect for fans of Stephen King and Neil Gaiman.—Kristin Centorcelli, Denton, TX

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Kirkus Reviews

Urban fantasy that gradually morphs into supernatural science fiction, from the multiple-award-winning author of The Troupe (2012, etc.). When ex-cop and now drifter Mona Bright's abusive, deadbeat and estranged father dies, she learns that her long-dead mother owned a house in Wink, N.M., which for some reason her father never went near. Wink, Mona finds, is a tough place to locate and even harder to reach: It was once a government town, built to service a mysterious research station atop a local mesa. The station was abandoned in the 1970s, and it seems her mother used to work there. Wink's inhabitants, furthermore, are decidedly peculiar. Some, unequivocally human, make "accommodations" with unseen entities and never, ever go outside after dark; others, like town clerk and gossip Mrs. Benjamin, the terrifying, unseen Mr. First (he lives in a canyon that nobody goes near) and motel proprietor Parson, who plays Chinese checkers with an invisible opponent, are fey and know more than they're telling; still others live perfect lives, Stepford Wives style, but without any real idea what they're doing. And nobody admits to having known Mona's mother--until she digs up a photo of her mother at a party along with a Mrs. Benjamin, whose appearance hasn't changed in nearly 40 years. To unravel the multiple mysteries, Mona will need all her survival instincts and the skills she acquired as a police officer. Investigating Wink and its weird, secretive inhabitants is enthralling--for about half the book. But then, Bennett starts providing increasingly far-fetched and repetitious explanations which ultimately prove far less fascinating than the conundrums. Highly impressive for the most part, but increasingly unrestrained and with a quite frankly absurd finale.