You Don’t Scare Me by John Farris

For several months now a strong desire to start reading John Farris has been building within me, one sparked by how often my favorite horror authors cite him as a huge influence while growing up. Unfortunately this desire had not been easy to satisfy since the bookstores around me have a serious lack of shelf space for horror novels -- or anything resembling a book which often leads me to wonder when they are going to end this charade of calling themselves a ‘bookstore’ when really they are nothing more than book themed cafes. Unable to find a single cover with the name John Farris on it, I eventually considered turning to the Internet to order a few, but then one afternoon randomly stumbled upon a cute little used bookstore while walking with my mother and headed inside, my eyes unsure of what I would find. The store was amazing, and within moments I had nearly a dozen books balanced in my arms, many of them by authors I had never even seen displayed in the usual bookstores I frequent. One of these was a battered copy of You Don’t Scare Me by John Farris. It was the only novel there by him, but given how excited I was to have all these books by ‘new’ authors in my hands, I wasn’t disappointed by the lack of a selection, and brought it to the counter with the rest of my find. Adding to the thrill was the realization that not a single book was over three dollars, a price I couldn’t even hope to match with one of the weekly coupons and membership discount cards I always carry into the ‘normal’ warehouse like bookstores.

You Don’t Scare Me tells the story Chase Emrick and her continuing battle with her step-father Crow Tillman, a man who killed himself with a bullet to the head after raping her at the age of fourteen. Though dead Crow Tillman is somehow able to reach into the world of the living and manipulate events to take the lives of Chase’s friends and loved ones, a situation which eventually causes Chase to socially close herself from the world, thereby protecting potential friends and lovers from enduring Crow’s deadly wrath. Unfortunately (fortunately?) one can’t stop true love, and despite her attempts at walling off her heart Chase eventually falls for a persistent young man named Adam who works as a campus police officer at the university she is attending. Still wanting Chase to suffer, Crow sets out to destroy Adam and the love he and Chase share, but soon discovers things won’t be so easy this time around. Undaunted by the supernatural attempts on his life, Adam does everything he can to help Chase mathematically prove the existence of the netherworld Crow attacks from, something she has been working toward for the last ten years. Proving its existence, however, is only the first step. Crossing over into and putting an end to Crow once and for all it is the ultimate goal. The question is how does one enter the netherworld Crow resides in without being dead themselves, and once there how will they get back?

While exciting and thought provoking, my first venture into the written world of John Farris wasn’t as satisfying as I hoped it would be, and actually left me disappointed. A part of this problem was probably due to the difficulty I had in finding one of his novels, a quest which inevitably built the expectations to an unreachable level. Another was the style of writing used to tell this tale. I flat out hate it when authors use the first person style of writing from multiple character view points -- in this case alternating between Chase and Adam -- because I can’t help but get confused at times on who is actually telling the story. The narrative also jumped into screenplay format for a while for no reason, which just seemed completely unnecessary. I don’t mind if authors get creative in how they tell a story, but that creativity should never distract one from the story itself, which is what happened here. Lastly I didn’t buy the sudden love between the two main characters. It just seemed too forced. I know true love can hit when one doesn’t expect it, but with these two I just didn’t buy it, and that in turn made the rest of the story crumble. Despite all this I’m not giving up on John Farris just yet and do plan on purchasing several more of his books. I just hope whatever I find next does a better job of helping me understand what it was all my favorite authors enjoyed so much, something which will leave me begging for more. Any have any suggestions? I should also point out that the ending did leave me shaken, which further makes me think this was just one of those misses that all great novelists suffer every now and then.