“American Ghoul,” the debut novel by Walt Morton, is a horror story supposed to be written in the spirit of authors Stephen King and Isaac Marion. The more appropriate comparison for this novel would be “Goosebumps.”
In American Ghoul, Howard “Harry” Pickman and his parents move from Baltimore to the small town of Madison in Georgia in 1968. Harry attends the local school, his mother is a painter and his father is just a regular hard-working man trying to provide for his family. The Pickman family seems very normal, but they are hiding their true identities; they are ghouls.
In order for ghouls to survive they must consume human flesh. Harry and his father steal bodies from a nearby cemetery, dissect them and harvest the organs. This ritual goes undetected for years until finally Madison residents take notice.
The day after Harry turns 17, he watches from the woods as his parents are murdered and his house is set ablaze. On a hot summer night in July 1977, he escapes Madison and hitchhikes a ride to New Jersey to live with his grandmother, who is also a ghoul. There he struggles to blend in with the town and risk having his secrets exposed.
The beginning of the novel is exciting because it is filled with murder, secrecy and death- the key ingredients to any horror novel.
After Chapter 1, Morton uses drugs, teenage antics, bullying, a sexy senile grandmother and a group of young adolescents, including Harry trying to make it in a punk rock band, to keep the reader’s attention.
The novel has a change of pace in the last chapter, when Harry is forced to stand up to his bullies from school. In classic hero-like fashion, Harry saves a friend’s life and risks his own. The bullies who tormented Harry all school year take him on a joyride to torture him, but ironically it is they who meet their untimely demise.
Harry savagely kills and eats the organs of the four bullies who tortured him. He disguises the murder as a car accident and goes to live happily as a pre-med student at Brown University with the girl of his teenage dreams.
Morton should create a horror story with vivid details and a suspenseful plot, rather than fill the story with typical teenage problems.
I read an advance epub copy of this novel in January. I don’t think the reviewer, Mr. Roderick understood the book at all. I checked on Amazon to see if I was crazy and other reviewers felt like Mr. Roderick. Nope. Seems like Mr. Roderick is in the minority. Most adult readers seem to get the idea that the book is a commentary on the whole genre of teen-lit cliches from Harry Potter to Twilight to whatever. But if you don’t have the sensibility for that — or don’t see the dark humor from that angle you could be disappointed. This really shows how different readers expect different things. If you read American Ghoul expecting a modern romance like Warm Bodies, yeah, you’d be put off — like Mr. Roderick. Sometimes horror is actually pretty horrifying. It’s too much for some people to stomach.
With all due respect, this reviewer is a complete idiot. First of all, there is no character named “Harry” in the book. The author never refers to Howard as Harry. Second, the whole freaking point of American Ghoul is to show the real monsters are us, regular human beings, not ghouls and such. Roderic needs to pull his head out of Hogwarts and learn a little something about real life. I give this review an F-