I had heard some pretty good things about The Croning by Laird Barron and with such an intriguing cover, I thought okay, let’s give this a shot. I needed something to listen to at work and I liked the narrator’s voice. Turns out, I should’ve dug a little deeper because this was absolutely the most boring and pointless ‘horror’ novel I’ve read in ages.
We start with a twist on the fairy tale of Rumpelstiltskin, which is interesting and has parts that border on inspiring fear. Bordering but never actually committing, which is what this entire book felt like it did. The second we would get to something that might inspire terror, we’re pulled back into the ordinary and boring. I understand that is likely the very point of the story because it mimics what protagonist Donald Miller is continually going through, but as a reader looking forward to a scary story, it was highly disappointing. The majority of the story is about Donald Miller and his life as a geologist, his wife, his family, his friends. Literally, I did not care and by the time things did start to get interesting, it was way too late for me to muster any kind of emotion other than boredom.
I don’t know if The Croning by Laird Barron failed to captivate me because it is a product of its time, though 2012 is not that long ago for it to have lost its shimmer. It could just be that I went into this with one set of expectations only to be met with incredibly dry and drawn out sections interspersed with hints at horror that should have built up to the grand finale instead of fizzing out. Maybe I just don’t have the patience or attention span for this. Either way, I would not recommend this at all to anyone.
