Randy’s latest review is a contemporary take on Lovecraft that’s a lot of fun:
This is how the brain works. It makes up stories out of whatever odds and ends it finds. Sometimes they’re scary stories.
But there are gaps I can’t fill. Like, the sound of my father’s voice. I can’t remember what he sounded like, even though I can picture him calling to me. In my memory I simply know that he’s yelling my name. He’s lifting me up out of the water, and there’s something trying to pull me back down. It’s black as oil and I can feel its teeth digging into my leg. In my memory I’m screaming, but I don’t hear that either.
— from the Prologue
At three years of age Harrison Harrison lost his father to the sea. Or maybe to something in the sea. His mother has never confirmed that or told the whole story, but he dreams of tentacles and in the dreams he feels teeth and sees his father lifting him out of the water. And he knows he was in hospital a long time for several operations. Now he and his mother are back in Dunnsmouth, Massachusetts, scene of his father’s death, as she continues the research in marine biology that her and her husband had been pursuing when he died. Harrison is now a teen with some anger management issues, and a sense that his new school, The Dunnsmouth Secondary School, is not going to be a comfortable fit.
Harrison’s new teachers seem unfriendly and the student assigned to help him acclimate, Lydia, is at best distant. Further, Dunnsmouth Secondary School houses some odd attributes as well as some secrets: There is a choir that sings songs he’s never heard and who, on his approach, turns as one to stare at him; there are corridors that didn’t seem to be there before that lead him to the library, the library other students rarely are allowed to visit and in which a somewhat dotty librarian says things that sound prophetic or maybe nuts; and the school swimming pool is deep in the basement, so deep it extends into a cavern and the pool apparently doesn’t have a defined bottom. And, on the first day of school, he finds a prowler in his house, a prowler with an odd skin condition and lots of sharp teeth.
But Harrison makes his way, slowly winning some loyalty from Lydia, learning of those who live near Dunnsmouth, and finding the key to some of the town’s secrets. Which is vital when his mom disappears for Dunnsmouth is awaiting the return of a presence the power that presence will bestow on them.
Harrison Squared is essentially a YA novel, prequel to We Are All Completely Fine (not really YA), featuring one of that novella’s main characters in the adventure that earned him his place in the novella. Like other contemporary writers, Gregory finds story inspiration in the mythos of H. P. Lovecraft, here melding Lovecraft’s Dunwich and Innsmouth to create a place similar, but his own. Gregory also faces Lovecraft’s racism but from a different angle than, say, Matt Ruff (Lovecraft Country) or Victor La Valle (The Ballad of Black Tom). One of the kids who befriend Harrison is not exactly, and some of the others may not be entirely, human, and these friendships do not go unnoticed by the students nor by school administrators who may not approve. The older generation, or a sizable portion of it, has an agenda of its own, one the students only learn by risking themselves.
It’s a testament to Gregory’s skill that he can create scenes that are tense and some characters who are sympathetic and others who are frighteningly believable – the Scrimshander is one of the most chilling concepts I’ve come across since Dan Simmons’ Shrike – while maintaining a lightness of touch and offering many genuinely funny moments springing out of character and a thorough working out of the implications of the story situations. This is a darkish urban fantasy that entertains throughout and a thriller that should entertain younger readers and their elders.
Harrison Squared by Daryl Gregory
Published by Tor, March 2015
320 pages
ISBN: 978-0765376954
