By Matthew Savelloni
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE
I’m not usually drawn to any book that splashes an Oprah Book Club or movie tie-in on its cover. So when Sean Desmond’s ABANDON caught my attention, I tried to ignore the large jagged circle proclaiming “The Book That Inspired The Major Motion Picture From Paramount Starring Katie Holmes And Benjamin Bratt!” But a less prominent blurb then caught my eye along the bottom of the cover: “Winner of the 2001 International Horror Guild Award for Best First Novel.” Okay, now we’re talking. After a little research, I discovered that the book had been re-titled as a paperback to ABANDON from its hardcover title of ADAMS FALL. To be honest, ABANDON works better; ADAMS FALL is a little too blunt, a little too obvious. Nevertheless, ADAMS FALL is the name of the book for the purposes of this review.
 |
It doesn’t appear as if Desmond has written anything since his first work and all I have to say is, “Start writing, Sean. If Washington Irving were alive, he’d be buying you a pint in congratulations.” Desmond has crafted a truly frightening book that expertly walks a tightrope between supernatural and psychological horror. The first person narrative is designed to forge doubt right from the start. The unnamed narrator clearly has issues and skeletons in his closet, therefore, his parable is suspect. Desmond wisely doesn’t present the young man as honorable or sane and then try to pull the rug out from under us. Instead, the narrator’s questionable rendering of the tragedies within the story and his own mind begin on page one and do not let up or clarify. This unrelenting stream of uncertainty and (potential) madness sets up the wonderfully spooky atmosphere sustained throughout the tale.
The narrator is dating Rosie their senior year at Harvard. They first met freshman year when Rosie was dating his roommate Billy. Billy commits suicide and it is through this potent tribulation that the narrator and Rosie bond. But there is friction in the relationship as the story opens. At first it appears the source of the discord springs from an uncertain future, the doubting, apprehension and incertitude that plague most seniors as they prepare to leave the protective womb of college. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the disharmony stems from the school’s lineage of death and corruption of which Billy’s suicide was only a recent descendant. Another member of the senior class commits suicide and the narrator takes center stage amidst a malignant vortex flowing out of his dorm and through the ancient tunnels and libraries of the university. He begins a passionate love affair with another girl, justifying his infidelity with Rosie’s apparent (in his eyes) distance as she prepares for an adult life without him. With the haunts closing in, his schoolwork falters and he indulges an increasing amount of alcohol and drugs. His life seems anchored to the sordid history of his surroundings and quite literally, the ghosts of the school begin to play with his heart, mind and soul.
Or do they?
This is where Desmond’s novel really soars. Time and again, the reader doubts the veracity of the unnamed narrator’s account. If he’s insane, how do we know what’s real and what’s not and how much of what we are witnessing is being distilled through the young man’s mental breakdown? Or is it all real and what seems like madness is just the throes of a young man’s struggle to keep his virtue intact? Perhaps the narrator is simply medicating repressed guilt and if so, over what? As more bodies pile up and other crimes surface (defacement in the library, thieving in the dorm, vandalism), the audience is unsure as to the level of complicity within our impaired tour guide. Undertaking some desperate detective work, he appears to be disentombing a ghoulish history of betrayed passion and sanguinary reprisals out of the school’s shadowy past but it’s very possible that the supernatural events are all figments in his terrible mind. Desmond judiciously volleys the reader’s expectations back and forth from dark ether to gritty reality over a tenuous net. The suspense is nearly unbearable as the narrator races to uncover the truth, taking the audience along for the horrifying ride.
“BUT THE TRUTH IS NOT THE TRUTH” – RUSH
Thank you, Neil Peart, for this very apropos heading. I can’t think of any other phrase which more accurately sums up the theme of Desmond’s novel. With the violence brimming to a head in ADAMS FALL, the reader burns through, at first glance, a typical thriller ending. Then the cold clarity that Desmond is not going to spell it all out hits like an icy splash from the Charles that ribbons in front of Harvard. Like all great horror, Desmond shrewdly leaves deciding what was real versus what was not for the audience. He turns our jaded, contemporary know-it-all-seen-it-all cynicism against us; we realize that our perception is as highly imperfect as our narrator’s beliefs. It is this characteristic which most establishes Desmond in the Lovecraftian manner. Unlike Poe, these scribes do not illustrate ostensibly “normal” individuals unhinged by distinct supernatural phenomena. Rather they present highly flawed--and sometimes those fatal flaws are simply rigid and grounded belief systems--if not outright insane, participants whose defects are exacerbated to insidious ends by possible otherworldly occurrences. Established reason becomes irrelevant. And so it is the audience who ultimately determines the source and validity of the cause of a character’s undoing and not the author. How much faith a reader places in certain supernatural episodes also determines how much condemnation they heap upon the respective character. Great horror writers are impassioned moralists. The condemnation by the audience feeds back out to them and society at large, the penance created by story’s end mirroring similar consequences for the vices and immoral behavior of everyday civilization.
The other great achievements in Desmond’s novel are the setting and mood. Let’s face it: the cold months of New England are the greatest medium for scary stories. They conjure images of tiny homes and cramped streets fashioned in the 1800’s, pitch-black nights, roaring fireplaces, frozen ground that crackles beneath the feet, deep dark forests, eternal gray skies and wintry gusts. Anybody who has ever walked alone down a quiet, dimly lit street in a small New England town from October through February knows exactly what I’m talking about. The very air seems haunted by the past. At times, no matter how long you have lived here, you feel like a stranger to the storied antiquity of your surroundings. Desmond chooses Harvard obviously because he attended the school. But he couldn’t have picked a more perfect theater for ADAMS FALL. Dusky libraries stuffed with archaic tomes, underground tunnels connecting aged buildings, dorms fashioned out of 19th Century prisons, dusty Victorians and looming portraits of dead Colonials isolate you in an atmosphere that when comforting seems familiar, but when unsettling makes you feel like you’re being watched by history itself.
ADAMS FALL is a remarkable novel, a triumph of tone, narrative and portrayal. It most reminds me of the way King’s evil in THE SHINING infests both people and places. The world enclosing Desmond’s characters vividly spring to life, as do the ghosts that may or may not exist anywhere except inside our narrator’s mind. ABANDON is the more apt title (and might be the one thing Hollywood gets right) because perceptions, feelings, hope, knowledge, strength, sanity, courage, insight, certainty, faith and reality are corrupted and futile. Like all great horror novels, ADAMS FALL makes you doubt that shadow behind the door and makes you believe that fearing things that go bump in the night is actually very good practice.
ANOTHER DAWSON’S CREEK ALUM – ABANDON ALL HOPE, INDEED
A funny thing happened after I finished ADAMS FALL and began researching the adaptation. I couldn’t find a credit to the book until I dug deep into the movie’s official site and discovered the following: “Suggested by the book by Sean Desmond.”
Suggested. Uh-huh.
 |
Red flags are now officially waving in your face, fair reader. Now, we know most film adaptations suck when compared against the book. It’s not really a fair comparison. Reading a novel is a solitary exercise that relies upon individual imagination and commands undivided attention over the course of an extended period of time. Watching a movie is a communal experience lasting a few hours at most while having the sounds and images supplied for you. Horror novels like ADAMS FALL and, to a lesser extent, those in the science fiction or fantasy realm, are unappreciated because they require a level of imagination that most people lack or do not feel comfortable or “intellectual” summoning. There are very measurable reasons why non-fiction (self-help, true crime, business, history, biography, etc.) sells so voluminously: it spells everything out, makes the audience feel “educated,” gives them something to impress listeners with at the next social gathering and requires little in the imagination department. In some bookstores you won’t even find genre sections other than “Mystery.”
Let’s face it, the majority of Americans are most comfortable with limited tastes, predictable formula and derivative entertainment. And don’t even bother bringing up THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING movie. I guarantee the majority of that audience never read Tolkein. Genre tends to work in film because of the gee-whiz, special effects factor; again, the vision is supplied for the audience. That is not the case in literature. And no matter how well you think comic books, Stephen King and Terry Brooks sell, the combined sales for genres dealing in the fantastic pale in comparison to the mega-appeal of non-fiction stalwarts like Warren Buffett, George Will, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Woodward, Stephen Ambrose (may he rest in peace), David Halberstam, Michael Lewis, Stephen Covey, James B. Stewart, David McCullough, Joe McGinnis, and Richard Simmons. For every Harry Potter that comes along so infrequently, there is a steady presence of monolithic bestsellers in straight-and-narrow non-fiction like WHO MOVED MY CHEESE?, THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE, THE PERFECT STORM, EVEREST, AWAKEN THE GIANT WITHIN, LIAR’S POKER, BARBARIANS AT THE GATE, SELF MATTERS, BAND OF BROTHERS, JOHN ADAMS, INTO THIN AIR and a torrent of best-selling tell-all’s and memoirs from celebrities. It’s not that these are worthless publications, they certainly have their merits and at times are just as artfully written as fiction, but their omnipresence in the literary world far outshines the exposure of genre literature while representing the middle-of-the-road, PG-13 tastes of contemporary pop culture.
I mention all of this to substantiate precisely why a Hollywood artist would feel compelled to totally savage ADAMS FALL, pull out a few obvious plot points and jettison the weave, spirit and structure to design a conventional thriller. The masculine, unidentified, crazed, drug-induced and haunted narrator of the book has been replaced by Catherine Burke, the ambitious girl next door played by Katie Holmes. The two or three pages where the police appear in the book have been expanded into a full-fledged supporting role for Benjamin Bratt to investigate the disappearance of Mrs. Dawso—er, Ms. Holmes’ boyfriend. The trailer suggests quite explicitly that the boyfriend is still alive and tormenting cute little Katie. Expect lots of faux scares, a twist or two, a desperate final confrontation and a pop song from the soundtrack. In other words, Desmond’s penetrating, Gothic milieu has been utterly wiped out and replaced by cheap, whitebread thrills obvious enough for the Gap crowd. There’s no sense comparing anything in ABANDON to ADAM FALLS because they are two entirely separate works.
Stephen Gaghan won an Oscar for adapting TRAFFIC from the British mini-series. He has also written for NYPD BLUE and THE PRACTICE. The man is obviously talented. ABANDON marks his directorial debut. Katie Holmes might very well be the next Audrey Hepburn. Benjamin Bratt is a serviceable presence and I’m sure we’ll one day say good things about at least one member of the young supporting cast: Charlie Hunnam, Zooey Deschanel, Gabrielle Union and Gabriel Mann. Fred Ward and Will McCormack are also on hand to lend a few more familiar faces. But I can’t comment on the blueprint involved. I read a clever and infectious ghost story/psychological thriller called ADAMS FALL. ABANDON, the movie opening tomorrow, bears no outward appearance towards that novel at all. It’s “suggested by.” Its merits or lack thereof will be based solely upon Gaghan’s inventiveness since he has felt compelled to shun the refinements of the book.
Seek out ADAMS FALL by Sean Desmond if you are looking for assured goosebumps and robust creative writing. Maybe by the time you are done surviving its lurking phantasms, someone in Hollywood will get around to actually adapting it for the screen.
“The man who fears no truth has nothing to fear from lies.” --Thomas Jefferson
SHOOT-BACK HERE! |
ARCHIVES
