Cabin at the End of the World Review

Over the final couple of years, Paul Tremblay has consistently written some of the scariest stories that I've picked upwards. In A Caput Full of Ghosts, a blue-collar Boston family contends with the abnormal behavior of their teenage girl, who may or may not be possessed by a demon. In Disappearance at Devil's Stone, a boy goes missing, and his female parent begins to think that she's seeing his ghost. In his latest novel, The Motel at the Finish of the World , Tremblay spins out another terrifying story, turning the standard home invasion horror plot on its caput.

The Cabin at the End of the World plays out at a intermission-cervix footstep, with its events taking identify over the course of ane frightening day. Nosotros're introduced to a seven-twelvemonth-old girl named Wen, adopted from China by a gay couple (Daddy Eric and Daddy Andrew). Wen is an inquisitive kid who takes the family'southward vacation to off-the-grid New Hampshire seriously, studying grasshoppers and having fun existence away from school. While she'southward out collecting bugs, she'southward approached by a large man named Leonard, who tells her that he wants to be her friend, and that he and his friends need to have a chat with the family unit. She flees to the house, and her parents try unsuccessfully to keep the four people — Leonard, Redmond, Sabrina, and Adriane — out.

In one case the four invaders are within, they tell the frightened family that they don't want to hurt them, but they have an important mission: 1 member of the family must be voluntarily sacrificed. If they don't, the apocalypse will come.

Like Tremblay'south other books, The Cabin at the End of the World never really spells out whether or non the novel really has supernatural overtones to information technology, or if information technology'southward just people doing horrifying things to others. The invaders claim to accept come together after having visions of the cabin, meeting on an net forum before uniting to behave out their God-given task. When their victims don't believe them, Leonard shows television footage of a tsunami, saying that the disaster is proof that their story — implausible equally it is — is true. The family is appalled at the idea of sacrificing one of its members, but the horror is accompanied by some doubt: what if something terrible does happen if they refuse?

Image: Harper Collins

Tremblay's ambiguity about the novel'south terrifying premise hints at a commentary nearly the nature of misinformation and the lengths that people will go to believe outlandish things. These four invaders aren't necessarily die-hard conspiracy theorists, but they do put together $.25 of news from around the world, that aren't otherwise continued, into a story of a coming apocalypse, and seek out a fashion that they can potentially control the fate of the globe around them.

Viewed from outside their bubble, the story is ridiculous. But it'due south got plenty of existent-world analogues — from sensational conspiracies like Pizzagate and the supposed Jade Helm military takeover to the more superficially respectable rejection of climatic change scientific discipline. Aided past bellowing online commentators pushing their own agenda and warped worldview, people put together disparate pieces of information into semi-plausible stories.

The Cabin at the End of the Globe would exist scary plenty as a supernatural story about iv people proclaiming to be the messengers of the apocalypse. Merely seeing four well-intentioned people led astray by a collective, warped worldview is fifty-fifty more frightening in 2018. It's frightening considering it's so plausible — and as a father of a child around Wen's age, this book depicts a scenario that'southward literally kept me upwardly at dark and been the fuel for nightmares. A grouping of vastly different people meeting through the net and going off to force a family to go through an unthinkable feel isn't the stuff of horror fiction; it'south something that could happen now.

Practiced horror stories look at the globe around the states to draw inspiration every bit to what could become wrong, and with this book, Tremblay has penned a story that'due south not but a nightmare as information technology plays out on the page, but i that's grimly reflective of the times that nosotros alive in. It'due south a gripping story, ane that I actually hope stays on the page.

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Source: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/30/17444584/paul-tremblay-the-cabin-at-the-end-of-the-world-horror-book-review

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