Friday, October 10, 2014

REVIEW: THE UNEARTHED by EVAN RONAN

UNEARTHED is not just a frightening Supernatural, it's also a character study, and oddly, this aspect is probably what I enjoyed most. The premise--a residence which three years ago had been the site of brutal inter-familial violence now seems to be "haunting" the newest owners--has been played before, in fiction and film (The Amityville Horror, anyone? Jay Anson' s "666"? Anne River Siddons' "The House Next Door?" and many, many more) But whether an early author, screenwriter, or playwright has couched this premise is immaterial. What we want to know is: What does Evan Ronan do with it? Well, Gentle Readers, he gives us character study--and lots of them. He intriguingly weaves backstory, offstage story (the lives of characters away from the House), local history and local color. He gives us himself as a character in the story, and he is unafraid to be vulnerable. The central question here is not so much "What happened? Why?" It's not even is this house/lot/land supernaturally possessed? No, the real question is: What are these characters going to do? Three years ago, the Moriarty Family chose one bloody irredeemable option. Now what will the new residents, the Rosselli Family, choose? And what will the amateur ghost hunters they've contracted find? Will either of the ghost hunting brothers recover accurate memory of the accident which took their parent's lives? There's a tremendous amount of resonance between the earlier family and the current family, and between the earlier family and the ghost hunters' past. Now the reader must determine who--or what--is plucking the strings of these resonations.

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