Book Review: The Snowman's Children, by Glen Hirshberg
A coming-of-age story with a serial killer. But the serial killer isn't even a character.
Carroll & Graf, 2002, 352 pages
In the mid-1970s, as a serial killer called the Snowman stalks the streets of suburban Detroit and the racial tension that had ripped the city in half a decade earlier continues to underscore every aspect of daily life, Mattie and Spencer, two exceptionally bright eleven year-old boys, wage an increasingly desperate and misguided campaign to save their friend Theresa, a brilliant, cryptic, troubled young girl, from descending into terrifying mental illness. The final, grand act of that campaign has shattering effects on many lives, drives Mattie's family from their home, and ultimately lures him, seventeen years later, back to Detroit to seek out his lost friends and make one last attempt to set things right.
You may not be sure what you're getting into when you start this book. It's kind of horror, kind of a mystery/thriller, but mostly it's a sad, surprisingly moving, character-based story about kids growing up, sometimes growing up too early the hard way and making mistakes that even at their young age, can't be taken back and have repercussions for the rest of their lives.
The Snowman's Children is a coming-of-age novel with a serial killer. No, the serial killer isn't the one coming of age. In fact, we never meet the serial killer, he's offstage and really just a plot device throughout the book, something that drives the events but not really a character.
Mattie Rhodes is the POV character, reminiscing about his childhood in suburban Detroit in the 1970s and the critical events of one tragic year. There is a serial killer abducting children and leaving their carefully posed bodies around the neighborhood, driving the adults mad with fear and paranoia while the kids, of course, treat it like a live-action 24/7 haunted house ride. Mattie's best friends are Spencer, the only black kid in the neighborhood, and Theresa, a brilliant girl whose father hosts the weekly "Mind Games" that everyone in their class competes in.
The book jumps around in time, between flashbacks to the 70s and Mattie's college years, and the present day when as a mediocre "artist" with a deteriorating marriage and a newborn child, he decides to return to his hometown because he's still haunted by what happened when he was a kid.
If you're getting a Stephen King vibe from this, there's a lot of King's childhood-is-magic-and-also-brutally-scary storytelling here. But Hirshberg's touch is softer. There are a few gruesome scenes but mostly as seen through the not-yet-jaded eyes of a child, and the story isn't really about children being murdered, it's about being a child trying to navigate life when you're kind of messed up, your friends are kind of messed up, your parents and neighbors are all kind of messed up, and also children are being murdered.
What elevates this book above your basic thriller-with-a-kid-killer is that it's an intense and deeply psychological novel. The serial killer isn't a slasher movie villain, there are no on-screen murders or jump scares, he's just a nameless ever-lurking threat in the background. What is foregrounded are Mattie's internal dialogs, his relationship with his loving but angry mother, his hard-working but weak father, his contemptuous younger brother, his status as a weird misfit who isn't exactly hated but isn't liked either. Spencer and Theresa also have complex personal and family situations - and Theresa's is made more complex by the fact that, even as young as she is, the mental illness that will eventually consume her life is starting to pull her out of the cozy childhood friendship circle.
Eventually we get to the part when Mattie and Spencer and Theresa do something terribly stupid. Well, first Mattie and Spencer do something stupid, and then Theresa makes it worse. They're just kids, so on one level they know better, but they really don't, and of course they don't really understand consequences, not yet. It's painful watching Mattie fuck up so epically and tragically. When everyone else in the story just wants to hit him, and Mattie wants to hit himself, the reader does too, even though you're still telling yourself "He was just a kid! He meant well! It seemed like a good idea in his head!"
In a sense, Mattie is still paying for what he did years later, as an adult. He's never been able to get past what happened, just as Spencer and Theresa have never been able to escape it.
This was a very impressive book which apparently was the author's first novel, deeper than I was expecting and definitely not just a "book about a child serial killer."
My complete list of book reviews.
Carroll & Graf, 2002, 352 pages
In the mid-1970s, as a serial killer called the Snowman stalks the streets of suburban Detroit and the racial tension that had ripped the city in half a decade earlier continues to underscore every aspect of daily life, Mattie and Spencer, two exceptionally bright eleven year-old boys, wage an increasingly desperate and misguided campaign to save their friend Theresa, a brilliant, cryptic, troubled young girl, from descending into terrifying mental illness. The final, grand act of that campaign has shattering effects on many lives, drives Mattie's family from their home, and ultimately lures him, seventeen years later, back to Detroit to seek out his lost friends and make one last attempt to set things right.
You may not be sure what you're getting into when you start this book. It's kind of horror, kind of a mystery/thriller, but mostly it's a sad, surprisingly moving, character-based story about kids growing up, sometimes growing up too early the hard way and making mistakes that even at their young age, can't be taken back and have repercussions for the rest of their lives.
The Snowman's Children is a coming-of-age novel with a serial killer. No, the serial killer isn't the one coming of age. In fact, we never meet the serial killer, he's offstage and really just a plot device throughout the book, something that drives the events but not really a character.
Mattie Rhodes is the POV character, reminiscing about his childhood in suburban Detroit in the 1970s and the critical events of one tragic year. There is a serial killer abducting children and leaving their carefully posed bodies around the neighborhood, driving the adults mad with fear and paranoia while the kids, of course, treat it like a live-action 24/7 haunted house ride. Mattie's best friends are Spencer, the only black kid in the neighborhood, and Theresa, a brilliant girl whose father hosts the weekly "Mind Games" that everyone in their class competes in.
The book jumps around in time, between flashbacks to the 70s and Mattie's college years, and the present day when as a mediocre "artist" with a deteriorating marriage and a newborn child, he decides to return to his hometown because he's still haunted by what happened when he was a kid.
If you're getting a Stephen King vibe from this, there's a lot of King's childhood-is-magic-and-also-brutally-scary storytelling here. But Hirshberg's touch is softer. There are a few gruesome scenes but mostly as seen through the not-yet-jaded eyes of a child, and the story isn't really about children being murdered, it's about being a child trying to navigate life when you're kind of messed up, your friends are kind of messed up, your parents and neighbors are all kind of messed up, and also children are being murdered.
What elevates this book above your basic thriller-with-a-kid-killer is that it's an intense and deeply psychological novel. The serial killer isn't a slasher movie villain, there are no on-screen murders or jump scares, he's just a nameless ever-lurking threat in the background. What is foregrounded are Mattie's internal dialogs, his relationship with his loving but angry mother, his hard-working but weak father, his contemptuous younger brother, his status as a weird misfit who isn't exactly hated but isn't liked either. Spencer and Theresa also have complex personal and family situations - and Theresa's is made more complex by the fact that, even as young as she is, the mental illness that will eventually consume her life is starting to pull her out of the cozy childhood friendship circle.
Eventually we get to the part when Mattie and Spencer and Theresa do something terribly stupid. Well, first Mattie and Spencer do something stupid, and then Theresa makes it worse. They're just kids, so on one level they know better, but they really don't, and of course they don't really understand consequences, not yet. It's painful watching Mattie fuck up so epically and tragically. When everyone else in the story just wants to hit him, and Mattie wants to hit himself, the reader does too, even though you're still telling yourself "He was just a kid! He meant well! It seemed like a good idea in his head!"
In a sense, Mattie is still paying for what he did years later, as an adult. He's never been able to get past what happened, just as Spencer and Theresa have never been able to escape it.
This was a very impressive book which apparently was the author's first novel, deeper than I was expecting and definitely not just a "book about a child serial killer."
My complete list of book reviews.