Symphony

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\Publishers_Weekly

It comes as no surprise that the leading exponent of subtle dark fantasy would have the apocalypse begin not with worldwide war, pestilence and famine, but with the eerie tolling of a church bell on a quiet summer night in rural New Jersey. Here, as in his earlier novels, Grant (Jackals) dissects the lives in an average small town and finds in the personal and social tensions that shape them the rhythms of something sinister, and possibly supernatural. But in this first volume of his projected Millennium Quartet, he raises the stakes for a gamble that only partly pays off. Forsaking his usual understated characterizations, Grant probes the personality of Casey Chisholm, a troubled Episcopalian minister who suddenly finds himself endowed with miraculous powers to control the local fauna and raise the dead. While Casey struggles to understand his wild talents, they serve as a homing beacon for a carload of criminals who represent evil incarnate and who are accelerating their nationwide spree of slaughter to a bloody climax in Casey's sleepy adopted home of Maple Landing. Grant seeds the story with a succession of portentous images culled from previous novels: a phantom horse, an ominous black sedan and a simple tune, begun with that pealing bell, that reaches a crescendo as a funereal dirge. These touches prove more affective than effective, however; they illuminate neither the story's millennial prognostications nor the mysterious identities of the major players. Like the Book of Revelations to which it frequently alludes, Grant's tale of ordinary folk striving to learn the part they play in the cosmic scheme is as elliptic as it is intriguing.

Press Associated

Reading Symphony is a lot like watching The X-Files.

and Courier Charleston Post

"Page after page, Grant delivers maximum chills."

Hartford Courant

"Charles Grant is a master craftsman. [Symphony] is a promising beginning for a timely series...during the countdown toward 2000."

Kirkus Reviews

First volume in Grant's (In the Fog, 1993, etc.) millennial tetralogy about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, this one focusing on the pale horseman Death.

Far more adventurous than his story is Grant's form, which imitates the structure of a symphony. The effect seems rather feeble, though, when set beside Anthony Burgess's Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements or Joyce's music chapter in Ulysses ("Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing"). Here, the small town of Maple Landing is about to witness, it would seem, the beginning of the world's end. A church bell tolls at night when no one is there to ring it—and, impossibly, only one bell of the three in the belfry rings. The altar crucifix, meantime, is coated with dead moths. Innocent young Dimitri sees a horse gallop about town that no one else can see, then hears large flocks of birds no one else hears. A crazy Bible-thumping woman warns everyone of the Lord's approaching vengeance. Following the worst winter in memory, folks at the Moonglow Diner speculate about the heavy heat, house fires, and water contamination. Reverend Casey Chisholm, a giant, hides a sorry past, but suddenly seems to have the ability to perform miracles. The rough beast slouching toward Maple Landing is a magnificent Lincoln Continental "nearly as white and silent as the moon, silver horse in full gallop fixed on the hood." The shadowy driver within would seem to be a woman, accompanied by Lupé, who can see werewolves, and by Stan Hogan, a vagrant of uncertain morality. It's likely that many of these figures will reappear in later installments. This first of the series, however, is all plotless nuance and buildup, full of hopscotch scene-drawing until the storm breaks in the final pages, releasing a rather conventional small-town apocalypse.

Grant offers such modest intensity here (leaving bigger apocalypses, one assumes, for future volumes) that few will linger long. Horseman, pass by.