Steve-Calvert.co.uk
Steve-Calvert.co.uk
A Passion For Horror
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By
Christopher
Pike
The cover of this book is rather misleading: blood and candles. Looking at it you might expect the story to be about a serial killer with a fetish for naked flames, or something equally strange and gory, but The Midnight Club is not really a horror story at all. Not in the traditional sense anyway, but neither is it exactly a light-hearted read because all of the central characters are dying. There are no more treatments for them to try, no miracle cures and no hope; so it is, as you can imagine, quite a sad tale. The story is set in a Rotterham Home, a hospice where all of the residents are teenagers. The main character is a girl called Ilonka Pawluk. Ilonka has cancer, but for a lot of the book she remains in denial about the severity of her condition. She has been taking a mixture of various herbs and is working very hard to convince herself that they are working. Ilonka's roommate Anya Zimmerman doesn't bother with herbs and she doesn't delude herself that she is going to get better. She has already lost one of her legs to cancer and is in so much pain that the morphine does not quite cut the mustard anymore. Anya's personality is quite different from Ilonka's in many ways, but the two girls are still good friends. The love of Ilonka's life is a fellow patient named Kevin. It seems a doomed love, though, because on the one hand Kevin already has a girlfriend, and on the other his leukaemia is quite advanced. Kevin is a good guy, but he is in a bad way. The other main characters are a young man named Spencer Haywood and a girl named Sandra Cross. Spence has quite an outgoing personality and he is, all things considered, a fun guy. Sandra is a slightly less interesting character, but that is okay because she does not play such a big part in the story as the others do. Like the others though, Sandra is a member of The Midnight Club. They call it The Midnight Club because that is when they all meet. They see each other through the day, of course, but midnight is a special time for them, when they get together and tell each other stories. Doctor White, who runs the hospice, is happy for them to meet like this, because it gives them something to look forward to, and they don't have much else. In fact, the doctor even allows them to meet in his study, where he always leaves an open fire blazing for them. None of them can remember whose idea it was to form the club. Spence says that it was his idea, but Ilonka thinks that it was originally Kevin who thought of it. Kevin, on the other hand, credits Ilonka with the idea. The origin of the idea, however, is not important. The main thing is that they enjoy getting together and sharing their stories. One idea, though, unquestionably belongs to Spence. Because none of them will ever know what happens when they die, until they actually do so, he suggests that the first one of them to go should try to come back and give the others a sign that he or she is, in some form, still around. You might think that Spence's idea forms the main storyline of the book, but it doesn't. There is a lot happening in this book, but the touching love story between Ilonka and Kevin is probably the main thing that is going on and there is also a subplot involving Kevin's girlfriend, Kathy, who visits him regularly and has not really grasped the fact that he isn't going to get better. Ever. When Kevin commences telling a particularly long story, that needs to be told over three nights, there is always the question of what will happen next in his story so, again, another subplot. Then there is the Master. He turns up in a lot of Ilonka's dreams and she believes that she remembers him from several past lives, even Kevin seems to be familiar with Ilonka's Master and so, here again, the reader is presented with another little mystery, added to the mix, to give a little more life to a story that is primarily about death. The
Midnight Club is 211 pages long
and the characters in the story are all very lifelike. They have hopes,
dreams and ambitions, just like any real person. The
Midnight Club is about life and
death and stolen futures and a whole lot more. It's a sad
story, and even a little depressing, but nevertheless it is a good
read, although it probably will not appeal to readers who are looking
for a traditional type horror story. |
