Sphere - 1990 Reprint - 217 Pages
Yikes, that's a MUCH better cover than the 1990 reprint I have....
The last Masterton I read was "The Devils of D-Day", a decent read until the climatic scenes when it goes a tad, silly. Sadly, The Heirloom not only suffers the same fate, it's even worse.
First, set up the perfect family and get ready to tear their little cosy world apart. Introduce Rick Dellatolla, antiques specialist, wealthy, nice wife and son. Best of all, happy. And how dare he?
Enter stage left, Henry E. Grant.
Mr. Grant turns up at the Dellatolla residence one Sunday afternoon armed only with a truck full of old antiques, and also a chair.... The chair is something I'd like in my own home (though without the whole gateway thing going on). Demon heads, snake arms, thousands of bodies falling down into the back of the seat, all lovingly carved into wood. Mr, Dellatolla has a good think about whether he wants to invest in the chair, but he hadn't figured on fate. You can't bargain with fate, it just IS.
And so the chair takes up residence at the Dellatola place. It isn't long before it makes its ambitions known, and none of them are good. Cue the introduction of the family dog, trotting across the lawn, tail wagging, demon cannon fodder. Cue strange sounds, lights, and voices. None of this is going to help the Dellatolla family one bit.
Slowly but surely the story behind the chair comes out, it's a nicely woven (and written) slow trickle of information that keeps you going. The chair won't leave, so the only way to get rid of it is to understand it, to know its history, and to understand its purpose. Dellatolla - with the aid of an English gentleman who turns up to buy the chair from him - works his way through the plot with just the right amount of confusion, determination, and guile. This is no ordinary chair, it's a chair with ambition!
However, all was not plain sailing for me. The biggest issue was the whimsical nature of the central character, Mr. Dellatolla. A quip is never more than two paragraphs from the guys lips, and when you're trying to build suspense and menace, it's inappropriate. The character is drawn very tongue in cheek.
The same can be said of the English gentleman who joins in the fun. He doesn't have the quips, but instead we get a constant barrage of insults and put downs (call them observations if you must, in a cartoony sense) about his Britishness. As this character develops I couldn't quite get into it, since most of the time people were making fun of him (and you can't stop some upper crust twit saying his lines in your head).
The other issue - and it was a big one - is the climatic scene. I'm used to fantastical elements tipping over into the "silly" region every now and again, this IS fantasy, after all. But then there's ridiculous. I don't want to ruin the end for anyone who hasn't read this, but it felt like a really bad Etch-O-Sketch moment. I actually laughed, which isn't good.
To be honest, I'm not at all convinced Masterton took this one very seriously. Although I have no evidence other than my read to base that on. There are one of two gruesome moments, but since the chair itself is the main menace, it doesn't do an awful lot. And without a satisfying climax, it fell a bit short.
I'm not sure what others think of this, but I'd say it was a middling work. It's okay, and if you have nothing better on, probably worth your time. Personally I was left wanting more - a lot more.
