John Saul - Comes the Blind Fury

[andydecker]

John Saul – Comes the Blind Fury (Dell, 1980, 383 pages)



Cover found on the Net

Amanda: A century ago, a gentle blind girl walked the cliffs of Paradise Point. Then the children came - taunting, teasing - until she lost her footing and fell, shrieking her rage to the drowning sea...

Michelle: Now Michelle has come from Boston to live in the big house on Paradise Point. She is excited about her new life, ready to make new friends...until a hand reaches out of the swirling mists - the hand of a blind child. She is asking for friendship...seeking revenge...whispering her name...

John Saul's fourth novel further established his formula. In the past blind 12 year old Amanda is killed by four other children which basically herd her over a cliff in Paradise Point, a village at the sea.

Decades later in the 20th Century the Pendletons move into Paradise Point. Calvin Pendleton is a doctor who is to be the successor of old and grumpy village doctor Carson. His wife June is pregnant, his daughter Michelle, 12 years old, is adopted. Unknown to them their new house is a murder house where poor Amanda's mother was also killed. Michelle soon gets mobbed at school and finds a nice antique doll, and soon Amanda is her best friend, telling her to strike back. Michelle has an accident, falling from a lower cliff, which makes her a cripple. Jealous of her new baby sister, alienated to her parents, mobbed by the other children she strikes back, goaded by the ghost and kills a couple of kids.


This doesn't work well. The simple plot is made too complicated and the background is not very well explained – as I only have read the translation, this may be part of the problem but I rather doubt it. Some of the characters severe changes in personality are not very plausible on the page; the constant POV hopping on a page also don't improve the writing. The story drags and the novel is too long for the plot. The set-pieces are rather dull. This reads as if it could have been much better with a re-write or two.

[pbsplatter]

These books are seemingly ubiquitous in America and I can’t quite figure it out; they seem like a slightly classier/more polished version of the stuff Zebra churned out

At least those Zebra books occasionally have jaw dropping lapses in taste, logic, and quality that can entertain

[dem bones]

The UK edition. Still yet to finish a Saul novel, not sure I even started this one. I so want to like him because his novels gets such an awful press! The paperbacks were charity shop perennials before they went upmarket.

John Saul - Comes The Blind Fury (Coronet, 1981: Dell, 1980)

Blurb:
AMANDA

A century ago, a gentle blind girl walked the cliffs of Paradise Point. Then the children came — taunting, teasing — until she lost her footing and fell, shrieking her rage to the drowning sea...

MICHELLE

Now Michelle has come from Boston to live in the big house on Paradise Point. She is excited about her new life, ready to make new friends ... until a hand reaches out of the swirling mists — the hand of blind child. She is asking for friendship ... seeking revenge... whispering her name ...