A decent book, but it just plodded along and didn't do all that much. I wanted to like it because I like John Darnielle, but, it just didn't click for me.

This was an extremely weird story, but I really enjoyed it. I wasn't sure what to expect since it was the first book I've read by Darnielle. I'll definitely be reading more now!

The book had an interesting premise, but ultimately fell a bit flat. I had a hard time getting through it and don't feel like the book lived up to the promises of the description.

Universal Harvester by John Darnielle: Summarized under the horror genre, I was expecting a very different story than the one I read, but nonetheless, I loved every bit of it! Eerie from the start, the tone of Universal Harvester is beyond creepy as countless rentals are returned to a video store with cut-in scenes of the bizarre. While searching for the perplexing source of the added footage, Jeremy, who works at the store, instead finds a way to reconcile the loss of his late mother. An emotional journey full of suspense and quiet, unsatisfying questions, Darnielle explores the complex relationship between mother and child. (4 Stars)

Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on February 7, 2017

Jeremy Heldt works in a video store in Iowa in the late 90s, when video stores still exist. Customers are complaining that the videos have scenes that don’t belong in the movie. The scenes generally don’t amount to much, but they are unsettling. Jeremy becomes a bit obsessed about the scenes, which are vaguely chilling but mostly just vague. One of the customers, Stephanie Parsons, shares that obsession. The owner, Sarah Jane Shepherd, doesn’t know what to do. Reporting the problem to the police would be a waste of time because the scenes, while ominous, don’t actually show any illegal activity. Or at least, nothing that they notice right away.

For some time, this is a story of people in a small Iowa town who are trying to work out what to do with their lives. From time to time, however, a first-person narrator intrudes — a change of pace from the voice that relates most of the events in the novel. The narrator’s identity is not immediately clear, but enough clues are planted to allow the reader to make an eventual guess. At some points, the narration seems to change from that of an omniscient observer in the present to an historian who is relating facts that are known and commenting on facts that might never be known. I liked the way the jarring changes in narration contribute to the puzzling nature of the story.

The novel alters course when it begins to describe the small town life some years earlier of a woman named Irene Sample, who eventually marries, has a daughter, and begins to receive religious tracts that clearly (to the reader, if not Irene) have special significance. As Irene begins to pay attention to what might be a religious cult, it becomes clear that a character in Irene’s story also played a role in Jeremy’s story. And then the novel changes again, to a time that is relatively current.

Universal Harvester creates the suspense of a horror story without delivering the predictable scenes of a horror story. In the novel’s last section, the reader’s questions are answered in surprising ways.

The novel reminds us that life is filled with sad moments. If they aren’t necessarily horrifying, if they do not involve gore and malice, they can nevertheless have lasting impacts. This isn’t really a horror novel because horror is a manifestation of evil, and Universal Harvester isn’t about evil. Some of the characters might be misguided, some might be mentally unsound, but they are not truly evil. Rather, Universal Harvester is about good people making the best they can out of life. It is about how much people have in common even when they seem to have nothing in common. The novel is surprising and heartening and distressing. It is, in other words, a reflection of life.

RECOMMENDED

The Mountain Goats lead singer John Darnielle is back with another nostalgic horror novel. Universal Harvester, the unrelated follow-up to Wolf in White Van, pitches readers into a VHS rental store in Iowa, where someone is taping cryptic and appalling scenes over the cassettes.

Like its predecessor, Darnielle’s second novel doesn’t try to be flashy or sensational. Universal Harvester isn’t The Girl on the Train or Gone Girl, where stories spin out in the midst of media frenzy. Instead of bringing the over-recordings to wider media attention, two of Nevada, Iowa’s — that’s nehVAYduh — Video Hut employees attempt to solve the mystery themselves, accompanied by the store patron who noticed the anomalies in the first place.

Characters live complicated lives outside the boundaries of Darnielle’s novel, and Universal Harvester journeys to dark places in order to show as much of them as is pertinent. But as the reader progresses, what the author chooses not to exhibit becomes the object of scrutiny, in much the same way that Darnielle’s heroes study the vandalized tapes in their care.

Universal Harvester isn’t a perfect novel. Readers will be left with questions in the end, and the narrative progresses at an erratic pace in a few key moments, which may necessitate re-reading in order to tease out important detail. With that being said, Darnielle’s second novel is an excellent choice for anyone looking for the horror novel next door.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for this review.

What a creepy and crazy good book! I just loved it so hard. The writing was fantastic!!

Well this was certainly a weird book! The writing style was unusual - and I haven't decided yet whether I liked it or not. I didn't quite see the purpose of 'the story could have gone this way - - or it could have gone that way'. Huh? I kept waiting for something to happen after all the buildup! I didn't hate the book - but it was just ok for me. I'm scratching my head at all the rave reviews.

In her novel A Visit From the Goon Squad, Jennifer Egan wrote of a time when people could still get lost. She was speaking of the time before social media and search engines, when a friendship once tight could completely disintegrate over the years and a person once close to you just a husk of a memory. In Universal Harvester, John Darnielle sets much of his story near the end of that time and takes the thought a step further, reminding us that there was a time when a person could willfully disappear. It may sound odd to a younger person, especially in an era where there is actually a game show that dares contestants to do just that and in which it seems to be a very difficult task to accomplish, Universal Harvester was a thought provoking reminder that the burden was once on the searchers.

I don't want to rehash plot. I do want to give credit to Darnielle for a quite unique and angst inducing start to this novel. Set in a local video store just prior to the time when every such store would be put out of business by superior technology and methods of delivery, Darnielle uses a small town and ordinary people to build a mystery that seems to hold possibilities for violence and terror on a small but frighteningly local scale. This Anytown, USA setting translates to a "this could happen to you" feel that I found both frightening and thrilling.

After building suspense, the novel takes a turn toward the philosophical as the story moves backward and forward in time with themes of loss, memory, loneliness and belonging. I like it when a novel takes me places I had neither expected nor intended to go and here is where Universal Harvester succeeds. It's thought provoking, strange and outré. I thought I'd stood in line to enter a haunted house, but I was actually headed to Wonderland.

I’ve seen Universal Harvester listed as a “notable horror release for 2017” on a few genre related blogs (like at Stories for Ghosts), along with a interest piquing synopsis caused me to seek the book out.I think this label is doing a disservice to the book. I went it thinking horror and left confused. I get the narrative, it is interesting, but it doesn't fit the horror niche. Nor do I feel that the book takes the reader anywhere but in circles.

The are some solid characters, and some engaging circumstances but the payoff in the end just isn't there. The backstory of the Sample family was intriguing, as is the set-up of hidden overdubs on videos. It's a fantastic springboard. But to have that go nowhere was really dissatisfying.

For every solid narrative step forward there were two head scratching steps backward. The characters make odd choices for no conceivable reason (unless I missed a major portion of this book).

At about the halfway point I completely dislocated for the book. I pushed through, expecting, hoping for a major bombshell, but received only a fade out.

When I requested a copy of this novel, I really had no idea what to expect; I'd read a description earlier this year and it sounded intriguing. In addition, it sounded a little outside of my usual fare, and I love to throw in a couple of "unusuals" every once in awhile.

"A few rows of corn will muffle the human voice so effectively that, even a few insignificant rows away, all is silence, what to speak of out at the highway’s shoulder: all the way back there, already fading into memory now."

It's part mystery/thriller, part drama; filled with little lessons learned as a native of a small town, as well as the feelings of desperation that often accompany the connectedness of a small community, the story is fast paced, yet also measured.

"It’s not that nobody ever gets away: that’s not true. It’s that you carry it with you. It doesn’t matter that the days roll on like hills too low to give names to; they might be of use later, so you keep them. You replay them to keep their memory alive. It feels worthwhile because it is."

Initially, I felt drawn in by the mystery; the relationships and slow-to-unfold stories of the characters are what kept me engaged. I loved the rural setting (could envision myself at the old video store in my hometown), but beware: don't get bogged down in the details, the mystery, the original story. Darnielle's writing and the stories within the story should be your focus.

As in the Mountain Goats frontman's previous novel, the spine of this is a recently obsolete part of the cultural furniture; in Wolf in White Van it was a play-by-mail RPG, and here it's a small town video rental shop, 2000, where unsettling footage starts showing up spliced into the tapes*. Ring is the obvious comparison, though the scenes here are more obliquely upsetting than cursed in any solid sense. Still, if ever a book were more about the journey than the destination, it's this one. The elliptical journey through the mystery, flashing back and changing tracks just when you think you're getting answers, is more something on which to hang the poignant details of little lives in big spaces, the empty Iowa landscapes, and that typically Darnielle knack for lovely little turns of phrase which somehow don't feel half so good when you quote them out of context but which in situ mean everything. And the politely intrusive narrator, with their mention of different versions of the story, and missing records, and tendency to leave the story contingent - I was thinking of Lemony Snicket even before the sad duty of telling the tale was mentioned. Sure, the resolution of the mystery felt like an anticlimax, but then to me they often do - it's why I don't read many straight whodunnits. This is still, in its own quietly haunting way, a very fine read.

*I did find it a little difficult to believe that someone working in that environment wouldn't know the trick for taping over (literally) a protected video.

This novel is a perfect mix of spookiness, quality story telling and unique plot lines. Deserving of a re-read. I don't believe I have come across anything quite like it in my reading life.

What a weird book. I completely understand why this would not be to everyone's taste, but I really liked it.
It lingers. And it really unsettled me. Would highly recommend to the right reader.

Reading Universal Harvester leaves no room for doubt that John Darnielle knows the Midwest. His lack of embellishment and overt action epitomizes the Midwest. The placid pacing of the story emphasizes the lack of urgency experienced in "flyover" country. His thoroughly unassuming and utterly forgettable main characters are good, salt-of-the-earth Midwesterners just looking to live their lives quietly, surrounded by family and community. It is as an accurate a portrait of modern-day Midwesterners as anything you will ever read.

Unfortunately, this means that for those readers who are not familiar with the slower pace of life alongside the lack of external emotion, the story is slow and uneventful. Nothing much actually happens. Jeremy does not conduct an investigation so much as assuage his fears. His main concern is for his manager of the video store and her growing withdrawal from society as well as for those appearing on the videos. Halfway through the novel, there is a shift in the narrative to a different family and a different time period. Mr. Darnielle states the connection between the past and present at the very beginning of the shift, but it still takes readers some time to understand the connection. As with Jeremy's scenes, the past is seemingly uneventful, plodding along from day-to-day with little in the way of adventure or excitement.

Yet to dismiss this lack of action within Universal Harvester is to dismiss the heart of the novel. The Midwest is slow and quirky; it is most definitely not flashy. Midwesterners are not early adopters of technology or fashion; they typically do not seek out danger and adventure. Moreover, there is a fundamental lack of emotion that manifests itself as if people were burying their emotions. However, what Mr. Darnielle shows in the novel is that emotions may not be on the surface, but they are there and they run deep. They connect communities and are what drive the massive influx of food during times of crisis. These emotional depths are what keep people searching for lost loved ones decades after their disappearances and are what drives Jeremy to begin his research in the first place. There is such a thing as Midwestern niceness, and Universal Harvester shows exactly what that is.

In Universal Harvester, John Darnielle does not just set his novel in the heart of the country. His novel embodies the Midwestern spirit with its penchant for helping out the less fortunate. It also showcases the unassuming way in which Midwesterners face life - unflappable, hard-working, and able to accept the relentless march of time. Universal Harvester is as much an homage to Midwesterners as it is a mystery.

I gave this one a try, but for some reason it wasn't gelling with me at this time. I think it's a "it's me, not you" problem, and will hopefully give it a try again another time. Thanks for the advance copy.

Without a doubt, this is one of the strangest books I've read in awhile. It's really engrossing, but disjointed at the same time. I read it in one day with breaks from it, and felt a little unnerved when I'd stop. It stayed on my brain, but I'm really not even completely sure what just happened. I'm glad that I'm not alone, reading the reviews for it. Parts of it definitely gave me the creeps. The book often switches perspectives abruptly right as you think you're getting somewhere.

Jeremy likes his job at the Video Hut. It's comfortable, and he doesn't have to do much. There's usually hours after opening where no one comes in at all, then there's a rush when the people of the small Iowa town get out of work and come in search of movies, then he goes home to spend time with his dad. His mother died years ago, and he and his dad have a comfortable routine with each other, having dinner and settling down to watch a film. Most days are the same, until two customers complain of their movies being interrupted by something strange. Strange black and white scenes shot in a barn are spliced into the videos. They last a few minutes before going back to the regular movie. They are odd and certainly out of place, and become disturbing. He starts to investigate where they came from with one of the customers, as the owner of the video store suddenly starts coming around less and less after viewing the tapes.

I was given an ARC of this book from Net Galley and Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, thank you! My review is honest and unbiased.

Universal Harvester is set in Nevada, IA - which is an actual town over by Ames in the center of the state - in the late 1990s. Jeremy's mom died in a car accident when he was a teen, he and his dad are just trying to get through each day, and while working at the Video Hut is fine for now, Jeremy really ought to start looking at getting a job with better potential. The daily Video Hut routine is interrupted one day by a customer complaining about a weird scene inserted into a copy of Targets. Soon another one surfaces in She's All That. The scenes are crude, black-and-white, in a barn, with creepy breathing and a hooded figure tied to a chair. The scenes are unsettling, disturbing. When Jeremy and his boss Sarah Jane begin investigating how many tapes have inserted "barn scenes", the rails come off their quiet Iowa lives.

John Darnielle, whose debut novel Wolf in White Van detailed the haunting life of a shut-in running a turn-by-mail RPG after two participants die trying to turn the game into live action, has perfectly captured the rural central Iowa countryside. He gets what it's like to live here, to drive out into the fields on two-lane blacktop or dirt roads during the growing season when the fields rarely have people in them. How eerie and quiet it is. The deadening of sound. (And if you're in the dark, how absolutely certain you get that The Children of the Corn might actually be real.) Darnielle also picked up on how Ames was growing out into the surrounding rural area in the 1990s, as did many other large Iowa cities, and how the balance between City and Country changed.

Universal Harvester of the strangest books I've ever read, but at the very end it all makes sense. The layers of the story twist and change as the characters themselves change and share perspectives during the story. The book's reality shifts but this isn't a book with supernatural elements. Right at the point I thought for sure someone was going to turn out to be a demon-possessed ax-murderer Darnielle pointed the story in another direction. An excellent reading experience.

I will fully admit I went out on a limb with Universal Harvester. I was on the fence about Wolf in White Van when I read it back in its hardback days. The idea of a mail in game (as someone who plays a lot of video and tabletop games) was fascinating. Much in the same way this one sparked my interest with its promise of hidden clips on VHS tapes. It was such a neat idea however, this one didn’t quite cut the mustard for me. It felt like he was going for a mix of Stephen King and Mark Z. Danielewski but he couldn’t quite make that connection.

I’m not entirely sure to be honest just what the point to this one is, I’ve got my suspicion but the overall plot was so chopped up to fit into the jumping timelines and flashbacks that I think the parts we needed may have been completely cut. His writing, the one saving grace of this for me, is beautiful. Even if overall the pieces didn’t make sense as a whole, they were individually so well written it was hard not to be enchanted. Then stepping away you’re left to wonder what you just read.

It seemed to be following a cult for the first half, and it’s machinations in these people’s lives then branched and became disorganized. Jeremy’s story is strong at first, and I empathized with him. Being a young adult, looking to find your place. Stephanie as well was interesting for the unfortunately short time we saw her. The questions start to rise, who is putting these clips in and where are they coming from. I was even okay with the jarring jump half way through to the past. After that it began to crumble. Not only did I lose the greater plot, I’m still not sure why our characters seemed to go up in smoke. They were passive in the extreme, the only character who seemed to have any get-up-and-go, Stephanie, was talked into ‘letting it go’ and eventually evening moving away for the bulk of the book.

I’m also curious as to the narrator of this as the first person tense was used so rarely. Was that intentional or was my copy simply not edited? If it was a first person narration was it meant to seem ominous in it’s all knowing presence? That jarred me every time. The first time I got excited, we had some sort of menacing presence. But it faded away, and didn’t return for another 50 or 60 pages.

There are some books that can pull off the puzzle in the horror genre, but this one didn’t work for me. The writing, I stress, was amazing. I loved his way with words and I’d read a huge novel from John Darnielle. It had a few moments of true creepiness. However the way the plot twisted and dropped without returning, leaving huge chunks out? That didn’t work for me. Maybe someone else can explain this one too me? Did I miss something? This may be one of those niche books that only a hardcore Darnielle fan will enjoy. If that’s you, it might be worth a read.