Incubus (Ballantine Reader's Circle) - Softcover

Arensberg, Ann

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345438167 ISBN 13: 9780345438164

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2000

Synopsis

Dry Falls, Maine was a simple farming town. Its residents lived innocently in sync with the seasons--honest churchgoing folk who looked to the land for a living and to tiny St. Anthony's church for spiritual sustenance. Until the spring of 1974, when a premature, blistering heat wave envelops the vicinity . . . along with something far more sinister. As crops wither, livestock birth only deformed offspring, and husbands lose all desire for sex, an ancient, unholy evil hungry for lust, an Incubus, secretly begins to prey on the town's women. As one female after another falls victim to erotic nightmares and dark violations, Cora Leiber, the wife of St. Anthony's rector, must look for answers in the depths of faith-- and her own tormented soul.

About this title

Review

You can trust Cora Whitman. She's a minister's wife, gardener, food writer, and just the kind of narrator that you don't find in most horror novels. She is practical, skeptical, and her matter-of-fact telling of the events that took place in Dry Falls, Maine, makes this incredible story easy to believe.

Incubus begins with Cora Whitman's preface to the "case study" that is the novel. It's an almost scientific warm-up for the paranormal roller coaster that lies ahead. Arensberg's Dry Falls is a typical, small New England community, except during the summer of 1974 when the weather got unusually hot, the rain refused to fall, and the town was gripped by a sinister sexual spirit. The first signs of the incubus were relatively innocent--the town eccentric lost a few hours of her day, husbands became uncharacteristically ardent, schoolgirls saw a "ghost" in a graveyard. As the story progresses, the incubus grows more sinister, until it stirs up a supernatural hurricane with Cora Whitman trapped in its eye.

Arensberg, whose other works include Group Sex and Sister Wolf, has created a sophisticated work of literary horror with Incubus. She raises many questions about religion, marriage, and the supernatural, and handles the subject matter with unflinching objectivity. Her prose is simultaneously elegant and pointed, and her characters both unusual and familiar, making the story irresistible. --Mara Friedman

From the Publisher

"A powerful, convincing, darkly absorbing novel...Beautiful prose, building tension...creating strong characters...It is a surprise and a pleasure to discover Ann Arensberg's Incubus"
--Vince Passaro, Elle

"Incubus has the style and wit of a Dorothy Sayers novel [and] it conjures up a horror."--John Casey

"It's a bold retro notion to make a post-modern ghost story."--Janet Burroway, New York Times Book Review

"A gory gothic thriller [with] all the elegance...of any 'straight' volume. The most finicky reader will find himself drawn in by the cool narrative style."--Carolyn See, Washington Post Book World

"Barbara Pym meets Stephen King, and it proves to be a heavenly union, though what transpires in Ann Arensberg's proper Maine village is the devil's doing."--Shirley Abbott

"The territory that was long ago ceded to Stephen King--ghostly goings-on in rural Maine--is entered to stunning effect in this absorbing tale of demonic possession...This is much more than a horror story...one of the finest contemporary novels of the supernatural--the best since Clive Barker's The Damnation Game." -- Starred "Kirkus" review

"A tale of shape-changers and exorcism written with intelligence, restraint and style...another impressive example of this talented writer's work...Despite the rapture of the tale, Arensberg's greatest gifts here are not the plot or the research supporting her tale of the occult, but her precise insight into character and the portrayal of the workings of a small community, the life of a pastor and his wife and a marriage in many seasons." -- Starred review in Publishers Weekly

About this edition

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0345438167
• ISBN 13: 9780345438164
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336