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Once there was a girl who ran away and joined a traveling carnival. She married a man she grew to hate―and gave birth to a child she could never love. A child so monstrous that she killed it with her own hands.… Twenty-five years later, Ellen Harper has a new life, a new husband, and two normal children―Joey loves monster movies, and Amy is about to graduate from high school. But their mother drowns her secret guilt in alcohol and prayer. The time has come for Amy and Joey to pay for her sins.…Because Amy is pregnant.And the carnival is coming back to town.
Audio CD: 7 pages
Publisher: Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (January 20, 2015)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1501215043
ISBN-13: 978-1501215049
Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.8 x 5.5 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (377 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #1,042,907 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #29 in Books > Books on CD > Authors, A-Z > ( K ) > Koontz, Dean #180 in Books > Books on CD > Horror #1746 in Books > Books on CD > Mystery & Thrillers
This horror novel, originally published under the name `Owen West', has many of the elements of later - and better - Koontz novels: clever children, a resourceful heroine, and an unnamed, but omnipresent, evil. However, this novel lacks the balance of other Koontz books; to my reading, it was all exposition and buildup, with a very anti-climactic final scene and no denouement. The plot concerns Ellen, who in the opening scene murders her possibly less-than-human baby; the opening is genuinely spooky, as Ellen fights for her life twice in a matter of hours, once from her child, then from her husband. She has married the owner of a carnival funhouse, Conrad Straker, after she ran away from her repressive mother. From there, the story shifts to Ellen's 17-year-old daughter Amy, who's forced to grow up in a number of ways she doesn't expect when a carnival comes to town. There's also Amy's brother Joey, a smart and loving child who, like Amy, fears his mother's combination of alcoholism and religiosity (one of the best moments in the novel is Ellen's realization she has turned into the mother she ran away from). Koontz builds the suspense well, and the reader knows it will only be a matter of time before Straker finds Ellen (or, from his point of view, better to find her children) to take his revenge for her murder of his beloved `Victor'. There's enough mysticism and jolts to keep the reader interested, but the final scenes seem cut short. Evil is vanquished, but we never know the true nature of the evil vanquished, as the novel ends after the quick and unsatisfying climax. In the Berkley paperback edition, Koontz provides insight into how and why this book came to be, and why the pseudonym: he adapted a screenplay, and he needed the money.
The Funhouse
