The Pallbearers Club by Paul Tremblay
Published by William Morrow & Company on July 5, 2022
my rating: 2 stars
Goodreads avg: 3.39 (as of 2022-07-30)
Spoiler-free review
Goodreads
I’m so disappointed that I didn’t like this. I’ve read two five stars, two four stars, and one three star by Tremblay, so I have pretty high expectations that I’ll like his work at this point. The Pallbearers Club had such a different vibe from the rest of his work, and I hesitate to even classify it as horror. It’s more like a literary thriller, but one that I found myself pretty bored by. The novel itself is meant to be a memoir written by the fictional Art Barbara (a pseudonym), but the ‘memoir’ has been found by Art’s friend Mercy, whose notes fill the margins, her words quite literally filling in the gaps that Art leaves out. Art and Mercy have a complicated relationship, spending years estranged before finding one another yet again. This was… so meandering, and I couldn’t connect with either of the characters. Art was self-absorbed and irritating, and Mercy just didn’t feel real to me. I’m hoping Tremblay’s next book works better for me again.
Sarah Ames-Foley 