Universal Harvester: A Novel Hardcover – February 7, 2017

I found this book very confusing to read. It was so disconnected from one chapter to the next. He wrote pages about what might have been and then comes back and says, " but that's not really the way it happened." He never really resolved the why of the mystery. Honestly, I just didn't like this book.

I really do enjoy John Darnielle's stuff, don't get me wrong. Wolf in White Van was a great read, it was cool to experience his first jump into this realm. And the first half of the book really had me, it was mysterious and not TOO crazy, along the lines of what I was expecting. The second chunk was pretty good, I felt it was giving good background. But then the ending kinda left me high and dry? Almost like I missed some of the book. I just finished it and went "huh..." and carried on my day with a confused look on my face. Not sure if I'm just not getting it, not sure if that's what he was going for.

This book is being marketed as a horror novel with a lot of emphasis on the mystery of the video tapes. I understand that we need a hook and a description for a book, but I think the marketing ultimately sells this book short and sets up an expectation that might not be met. I loved this book, as I have Darnielle's two other books. They have all impacted me on a deep emotional level, they are strange but very familiar.For me, this was not a horror novel. If it is then the monster is one of loss and grief and confusion. It is a monster that ultimately we must all face alone. This is a novel about the midwest where the seasons mark time in growth, death, decay, and isolation. These are small towns without the ready distraction of bigger cities, places where one is never far from having to contemplate mortality and existence among the hardly uninterrupted expanses of fields and county roads. People seek all kinds of escape there and those that love them are left with the consequences of the escape. Sometimes we ignore what occurs, and sometimes the damage never leaves us.If one wants the mysteries solved, then the seeds of explanation are there in the final section if one pays attention, but let us not forget that the universal harvester is death.

Apparently this was marketed as a horror novel? Luckily I didn't know that so I was able to experience Darnielle's clear prose unencumbered by that expectation. Sure, there are creepy bits here and there, but mostly it's an examination of loss and how people deal with it. There are a few annoying MacGuffins sprinkled throughout that muddy some of the "mystery" you'll be tempted to unravel. I recommend just enjoying the emotion the text can bring to the surface and not waste your time trying to tie everything up in a tidy bow by the end of the book.

I've been a fan of John Darnielle's work as a musician and an author for quite a while, so I may have a tinted view of his writing. While this book didn't quite live up to my expectations that were set by Wolf in White Van, it's still an engaging, thought-provoking novel that I read in one sitting. One of the best thing I think John does is tell people's stories, and give the stories that don't often get told a long-overdue and in-depth narration. The story doesn't draw you in because there's a heart-breaking romance or even an edge-of-your-seat mystery, it's because you get to see these characters with normal, usually unspoken about struggles in the quiet moments that they work through it. Jeremy doesn't have the perfect job, home life, love life, and his hesitant dive into a weird mystery lets him, and us, appreciate the normalcy.

This book grabbed me so quickly, and left me with a creeping dread which is so hard to create. Often you have horror, stress, tension, etc. but dread is something different - knowing that something awful is happening but you can't see it clearly so you just don't know what that something IS. However, the wonderful setup, which could have gone in a TON of awesome directions ended up at a pretty lackluster and unsatisfying place. So disappointing. This is one of those books that makes me want to write the MANY different arcs that would have been possible with the beginning untouched.

There’s so much to enjoy about this book. Part mystery, part thriller, and part tragedy, told by an unreliable narrator who tells alternate versions of the story in several places while going into detail about their preferred narrative. Almost every page had an interesting metaphor or turn of phrase that I often re-read multiple times. I usually rip through fiction, but when something is written that well, you have to savor the craftsmanship.

I enjoyed the read, but it seemed there was a lot of "changing of the subject". I think I got it straight, but I'm mostly glad to be finished with it.

An enjoyable (I think that is the right word!) read, where the mystery is wrapped up in a detailed and brilliantly written portrayal of small town America. John Darnielle has a talent for descriptive narrative, as fans of his music will certainly attest to. He also has a way of drawing the reader into the story, and holding you there, almost a participant in the unfolding events.This book is very different to his first, the equally good Wolf in White Van. Primarily concerned with family, and how the roots we put down (or don't) influence the decisions and actions we take throughout our lives, Universal Harvester feels in places quite dark and brooding. There is, however, an undercurrent of hope, which ensures that you never feel overwhelmed by it. All in all, an excellent read.

Heaven knows Morrissey’s ‘List of the Lost’ was such a miserable effort that it made me want to forever stay clear of novels by musicians.But singer-songwriter John Darnielle, founder of folkish US band The Mountain Goats, is the real deal.‘Universal Harvester’ takes the small town, quiet voices-still lives, chronicles of writers like Kent Haruf and Tom Drury and darkens them with a disturbed and unsettling psychology.It’s the end of the 1980s. We meet Jeremy. He works long, lonely hours at a Video Hut in Nevada, Iowa (population just short of 6,000). His mother has died six years previously and he feels himself to be increasingly at some kind of life crossroads. This feeling is sharpened when his customers claim to have seen strange things on the tapes they are returning. Jeremy looks for himself. Will it be porn? Snuff? No. What is spliced into these mainstream Hollywood entertainments are black and white, poorly-lit scenes shot in what looks like a shed, often featuring people in canvas hoods, acting bizarrely. One customer, Stephanie, claims to recognise the farmhouse where the scenes are set and tries to inveigle Jeremy into a little detective work.Thankfully, the novel then veers away from the oft-seen tale of amater sleuths cracking a mystery. Darnielle reverses time to relate the history of the farmhouse’s owner, a woman in her early 30s named Lisa Sample. We discover that when Lisa was a child her mother ran off with a religious cult, never to be seen again. The effect on her and how she copes is described brilliantly by Darnielle; ‘The mechanism that allowed Lisa Sample to keep her head above water...has not been catalogued by scientists...It’s efficient and flexible, and probably transferable from one person to another...but the rest of the details aren’t observable from the outside. You have to be closer than you really want to get to see how it works.’The novel is less of a whodunnit than a whydoit. Why are these seemingly meaningless but disturbing scenes being offered up to the residents of this mostly empty land of ‘simple social obligation’, bass fishing, and ‘full-throated’ winds. What are they meant to communicate? Why do these images reverberate so strongly with Jeremy, Stephanie, and Sarah Jane, the owner of the Video Hut? Why does the unnamed narrator of the story keep implicating his or herself in the production of the films and why does he or she keep intruding to tell us that numerous versions of the story exist?The mechanic of found, or altered, footage is hardly new, but here it is more bait for the story than the story itself. ‘Universal Harvester’ isn’t about creepy people and their creepy ways; it’s about the urge to change outcomes, and about ‘the great nowhere’ that exists both inside and outside ourselves. Written in spare, yet strongly poetic, prose, and with true things to say about the human condition, the novel succeeds in finding what its own narrator is looking for, ‘stories in impenetrable tableaus’.

It's very well written, both stars I gave it are purely for the writing.Other than that, I found the actual plot was vague and didn't really go anywhere at all. I don't really know how to categorise this book, its not horror, not thriller... I suppose the closest is a mystery.I think the author was going for something atmospheric, there's a great deal of detail in the descriptions of where people work, how they work, what jobs they do, the details of items and locations, etc. Some parts are almost entirely several pages of just very well written descriptions of things.Very very strange book. I'm unlikely to considet anything by this author again, just not my cup of tea.

Universal Harvester gave me a feeling of being unmoored - sometimes I thought I'd lost the thread of the story or perhaps missed something vital that would help it to make a bit more sense. But I think that's the effect the book is supposed to have on you. There's a lonesome quality to it that is both beautiful and frightening. Allow the different points of view and times to wash past you like gazing out at farmland as you drive along the highway. Definitely recommend this strange and wonderful book.

Devoured the first two-thirds of this short novel but it fell away weakly in the last fifty pages, ending on a whimper. It presents as a thriller but ends up as a rumination on human existence. One of the three central characters is radically under-developed, while another gets 70-odd pages of backstory. It's a lopsided but brisk read with much to enjoy but misses out on four stars because of the diminishing excitement of its closing chapters.