Book Review: Horrorstör, by Grady Hendrix
Half haunted house story, half allegory of the horrors of retail.
Quirk Books, Inc., 2014, 240 pages
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring wardrobes, shattered Brooka glassware, and vandalized Liripip sofa beds - clearly someone, or something, is up to no good. To unravel the mystery, five young employees volunteer for a long dusk-till-dawn shift and encounter horrors that defy imagination. Along the way, author Grady Hendrix infuses sly social commentary on the nature of work in the new 21st-century economy.
A traditional haunted house story in a contemporary setting, and full of current fears, Horrorstör delivers a high-concept premise in a unique style.
Horrorstör starts out light. It reminds you more of Office Space or Clerks than The Haunting of Hill House. Grady Hendrix excels at this sort of tongue-in-cheek humor inserted into what develops into a pretty dark tale, and the book itself is part of the satire, being laid out like an Ikea catalog, with increasingly sinister products described in ever-cheerful ad copy at the beginning of each chapter.
Amy is an unmotivated 20-something doing the bare minimum to not get fired from her job at Orsk, a cheaper knockoff of Ikea (which gets namechecked repeatedly several times just so we know Orsk is totally not Ikea). Her boss, Basil, is a walking Orsk motivational poster, the kind of guy who has read the company founder's autobiography and memorized the employee handbook. Her coworkers are Ruth Anne, a lonely spinster whose entire life and family are at Orsk; Trinity, a hot pink-haired tattooed Asian chick who wants to make it big documenting paranormal activities; and Matt, who pretends to be enthusiastic about Trinity's project because he wants to get into her pants.
There has been some vandalism around the store, Basil talks Ruth Anne and Amy into working an overnight shift with him to catch the perpetrators, and meanwhile, Matt and Trinity both sneak into the store to try to film the "ghosts."
The first part of the book is light and humorous. We get to know the characters, each of whom has more depth to them than first appears (except maybe Matt), and meanwhile, the hijinks seem more mundane-creepy than supernatural-creepy. Trinity and Matt's "Ghost Bomb" project ("because we're the bomb!") is all comedy relief, with lots of A&E and Bravo jokes (Hendrix loves name-brand callouts).
Amy learns, reluctantly, that Ruth Anne really is just a lonely woman who has nothing else without Orsk, that Basil is raising his little sister and that his enthusiasm and loyalty to Orsk is because this job was the best thing that ever happened to a black kid from the projects, and that Trinity may be a spoiled girl living on daddy's credit card who wants to be a reality TV star, but she's also a true believer in this paranormal stuff. And Matt just wants to get into Trinity's pants.
Matt is the one who reveals that the Orsk store was built on top of an old 19th century prison, which sounds like BS, until Trinity gets the bright idea of holding a seance... and then things go sideways.
If the first part of Horrorstör is a light-hearted tale about the horrors of working retail and the creepiness of big box stores, the second part turns into a gory, somewhat heavy-handed allegory of wage slavery and economic and social anxiety, in which Amy has to step up and try to protag, despite being very much not protagonist material. This is the Shirley Jackson half of the story, where evil manifests, bad things happen, and some of the characters escape and some don't. The old "built on top of a cursed place" trope is played straight here, and most of the humor from the first half is replaced entirely by supernatural horror.
While the shift in tone from the first part of the book to the second makes it feel like a sudden genre switch, I thought it was well done. Everything is all retail hell and wage slavery and horny young adults holding seances in a furniture store, and then suddenly you've got murderous ghosts and portals to hell, and yet it still connects to the mundane existential horror of the first half.
The ending ties both halves up quite nicely, with humor and horror. I felt the resolution was satisfactory without giving us all the answers.
A great read for fans of haunted house stories, or anyone who has ever struggled to put together a Kallax shelf.
Also by Grady Hendrix: My reviews of Paperbacks from Hell and We Sold Our Souls.
My complete list of book reviews.
Quirk Books, Inc., 2014, 240 pages
Something strange is happening at the Orsk furniture superstore in Cleveland. Every morning, employees arrive to find broken Kjerring wardrobes, shattered Brooka glassware, and vandalized Liripip sofa beds - clearly someone, or something, is up to no good. To unravel the mystery, five young employees volunteer for a long dusk-till-dawn shift and encounter horrors that defy imagination. Along the way, author Grady Hendrix infuses sly social commentary on the nature of work in the new 21st-century economy.
A traditional haunted house story in a contemporary setting, and full of current fears, Horrorstör delivers a high-concept premise in a unique style.
Horrorstör starts out light. It reminds you more of Office Space or Clerks than The Haunting of Hill House. Grady Hendrix excels at this sort of tongue-in-cheek humor inserted into what develops into a pretty dark tale, and the book itself is part of the satire, being laid out like an Ikea catalog, with increasingly sinister products described in ever-cheerful ad copy at the beginning of each chapter.
Amy is an unmotivated 20-something doing the bare minimum to not get fired from her job at Orsk, a cheaper knockoff of Ikea (which gets namechecked repeatedly several times just so we know Orsk is totally not Ikea). Her boss, Basil, is a walking Orsk motivational poster, the kind of guy who has read the company founder's autobiography and memorized the employee handbook. Her coworkers are Ruth Anne, a lonely spinster whose entire life and family are at Orsk; Trinity, a hot pink-haired tattooed Asian chick who wants to make it big documenting paranormal activities; and Matt, who pretends to be enthusiastic about Trinity's project because he wants to get into her pants.
There has been some vandalism around the store, Basil talks Ruth Anne and Amy into working an overnight shift with him to catch the perpetrators, and meanwhile, Matt and Trinity both sneak into the store to try to film the "ghosts."
The first part of the book is light and humorous. We get to know the characters, each of whom has more depth to them than first appears (except maybe Matt), and meanwhile, the hijinks seem more mundane-creepy than supernatural-creepy. Trinity and Matt's "Ghost Bomb" project ("because we're the bomb!") is all comedy relief, with lots of A&E and Bravo jokes (Hendrix loves name-brand callouts).
Amy learns, reluctantly, that Ruth Anne really is just a lonely woman who has nothing else without Orsk, that Basil is raising his little sister and that his enthusiasm and loyalty to Orsk is because this job was the best thing that ever happened to a black kid from the projects, and that Trinity may be a spoiled girl living on daddy's credit card who wants to be a reality TV star, but she's also a true believer in this paranormal stuff. And Matt just wants to get into Trinity's pants.
Matt is the one who reveals that the Orsk store was built on top of an old 19th century prison, which sounds like BS, until Trinity gets the bright idea of holding a seance... and then things go sideways.
If the first part of Horrorstör is a light-hearted tale about the horrors of working retail and the creepiness of big box stores, the second part turns into a gory, somewhat heavy-handed allegory of wage slavery and economic and social anxiety, in which Amy has to step up and try to protag, despite being very much not protagonist material. This is the Shirley Jackson half of the story, where evil manifests, bad things happen, and some of the characters escape and some don't. The old "built on top of a cursed place" trope is played straight here, and most of the humor from the first half is replaced entirely by supernatural horror.
While the shift in tone from the first part of the book to the second makes it feel like a sudden genre switch, I thought it was well done. Everything is all retail hell and wage slavery and horny young adults holding seances in a furniture store, and then suddenly you've got murderous ghosts and portals to hell, and yet it still connects to the mundane existential horror of the first half.
The ending ties both halves up quite nicely, with humor and horror. I felt the resolution was satisfactory without giving us all the answers.
A great read for fans of haunted house stories, or anyone who has ever struggled to put together a Kallax shelf.
Also by Grady Hendrix: My reviews of Paperbacks from Hell and We Sold Our Souls.
My complete list of book reviews.